


On Gifting Traditions in the Underworld

by Crownofpins



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Frottage, I mean, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Threesome, brooding (tm), chaotic bathing, eventually, fun with laurels, hero worship grows into horny worship, is it still a praise kink if you’re a literal god, it’s not a train if it’s two people right, let me rub your muscles said everybody to everybody, meg/zag/than is defo a thing, mentions of meg/zag, polycules for fun and lack of profit, running a chariot on zag, trains don’t fit with the setting anyway, you know theseus and asterius they be courting, zagreus bb u ok, zagreus the masochist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crownofpins/pseuds/Crownofpins
Summary: There are many nuances to the culture of the realm of the dead that Achilles has yet to fully grasp. As with all things, though, better understanding does come with time.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus (Hades Video Game), Achilles/Patroclus/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 141
Kudos: 837





	1. Laurels, nuances of abscission

* * *

Here is a thing about the prince he’s noticed:

— no.

(Because in this, as with all other things that don’t involve driving a bit of the earth, over-sharpened and over-shaped, into a man’s ribcage, he is indecisive—)

Here is the prince:

Smiling and handsome, eager to please, easy to laugh and free with what comes to hand that would serve as a suitable gift for anybody his eye falls on. (Anybody.)

Here is the king:

Scowling and so severe as to strike any handsomeness from his face, impossible to please, quick to anger and free, infinitely, with punishments. His words are so sharp they could flay flesh from bone, if any of the shades he scoffed at had any.

But Zagreus does.

Zagreus is sweating. He’s bent over, one hand on a leg, the other holding his sword, breath coming quick though that will pass swiftly. (From experience he knows this— he’d have the scar on his cheek still if he was alive still, and Pat would rest his index finger in it when it healed as if it had been cut for him, cut for that purpose.)

His form is improved— not good yet by Achilles’ estimate, but good enough to put most others to shame— and his attention, once so flighty, now rests most firmly on Achilles’ own shoulder, as if it’s a bird that’s come to roost. But Achilles was young once too, and he knows that the young have limits, even if they are gods.

“Good job, lad,” he says, clapping Zagreus on the shoulder. His skin is warm to the hand. Achilles has never been certain if he’s grown colder in death or if Zagreus is genuinely hot, lit from the inside with some eternal flame kindled bright. Perhaps it’s both. He can’t decide. “You’ve worked hard this go. You deserve a rest.”

Zagreus looks up at him through his hair, dripping sweat and laurel leaves equally.

That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is his expression, his eyes, even the way his shoulder tips. He looks up at Achilles with a sweetly puzzled expression, his normally cheery, cocksure expression canted aside like a mask knocked askew to reveal the actor beneath. He looks confused, uncertain, braced all in one go, as if waiting.

Perfectly timed, perhaps by the Fates themselves, an echoing boom of shouting seeps through from the main hall.

Ah.

“That’s all,” he says, picking up his spear to hide the tremor in his hands. “We’ll resume tomorrow, or whatever passes for it here.”

“All right,” Zag says, straightening, smiling. “Thanks, sir!”

“Pay your right side more mind next time and we’ll start thinking about learning sweeps,” Achilles comments, leading the way out of the courtyard, through the Prince’s rooms, thrown eternally into disarray. “But you did good work today.”

He doesn’t usually offer much more than the cursory comments on form or progress. It has never been his way. He’s used to the martial life, still. No boy under his hand would have needed anything more than his instruction. Such praises would come from his mother, admiring her son’s ever-stronger arms, or his father, pleased by how he was coming up in the world with such a fine teacher.

“Thank you,” Zagreus says, more quietly, tucking his elbows in and his chin down and to the side, just a little, to look at Achilles better with his green eye. (He does that sometimes, seems to choose one eye or the other to focus through. Achilles doesn’t feel he’s entitled to ask what he sees that way— not yet.)

“Clean your blade,” he says, jerking his own to Zagreus’, still held in one hand, “and go wash up.”

“Will do,” Zagreus agrees, fishing around one-handed inside a random vase and coming up with an oiled rag. (His room may be a disaster, but at least he seems to know where everything is in it. Achilles can’t help but hold that in contrast to his lord father, who is ordered and precise yet, despite that, can never seem to find whatever it is that he seeks so desperately.)

He leaves quietly, listening to the happy trill of whistling as Zagreus sets to work oiling his sword. Achilles chances a glance over his shoulder as he opens the door and sees the prince swinging his feet, cheeks warm, smiling a smile as one does only for oneself.

Gods help them all, Achilles thinks, shutting the door behind him, but a man that can be fed on such crumbs is dangerous indeed.

When he’s older, when he has little more to learn from Achilles, when he starts to ransack the house of Hades with his own goals held dearly in his heart, it’s nectar he brings.

When he was younger, it was this:

“Huh,” Achilles says, balancing the little thing between two fingers carefully.

“You can keep it, if you like it,” Zagreus says with such simple ease that he could be talking about a grape out of hand.

“I don’t know if that’s appropriate, lad.” But the little laurel leaf is beautiful, he admits, turning it just so so that the veins of the thing light up brighter than the rest. Unlike the ovals Lord Hades sheds occasionally during his fits of most extreme temper (most of them directed at his Prince, who in turn sheds leaves of his own in response, usually in greater number), this one is distinctly and recognizably a _leaf_ , if one cast in purest gold.

“Nonsense,” Zagreus says, his expression drifting toward a rare fit of pique even as he, bent over, tries his best to stretch as he’s just been shown. It’s a slow go. “It’s _from_ me, so it’s mine to give. You can have it, and nobody else has any say in it.” And there it is: another laurel leaf flutters loose, falling to rest gently at the seam of Zagreus’ muscled shoulders as he flexes and bends forward. Achilles watches it for a moment longer than he thinks, technically speaking, is appropriate.

“Thank you, then,” he says, tucking it into the little pocket-fold under his belt.

The storm clears before it could ever form. Zagreus bows into a deeper bend. His spine cracks a little, but he makes a faint noise of pleasure before Achilles can ask if he’s all right.

“Hold that position,” he says softly, eye fixed almost unwillingly now on the small leaf settled between Zagreus’ shoulder blades. “If your body is too tight, your form will suffer. Make the time to be flexible and you’ll find that you have more paths to victory in the heat of the moment.”

He feels more than sees Zagreus’ eyes on him, curled down on himself as he is.

“This doesn’t feel great,” he admits, a rare enough complaint that Achilles almost wants to go easy on him, tell him to come out of it and release and try again later. But that’s not his place, is it, not his place to praise and pet and coddle him, so Achilles waits instead, with crossed arms, and watches the strain in his arms ease and the stiffness in his back loosen, watches the way his waist steadies as his balance settles and then, barely, the bob of the prince’s Adam’s apple as he swallows.

“All right,” he finally allows, his tone warm not so much because he allows it to be but because Zagreus has made a happy grunt and the joy of the noise, like everything else about Zagreus, is infectious. “Now the other side, mirrored. Come on, lad, no groans,” because his joy has dissolved into moaning resignation near-instantly, “or you’ll be groaning for other reasons, likely on your back.”

Zagreus freezes.

Achilles fixes his stare on the little leaf stuck to his skin, right at the seam of those (divinely-sculpted) muscles.

“Because…” the prince says, tipping his head like a confused dog so the green eye comes up and the red goes down, an eyebrow coming up skeptically, “I’ll be lying there with my… guts out?”

“Aye,” Achilles says, “strewn loose across the earth in a messy display,” and because he’s a man, not a godling, he waits until Zagreus is folded down on himself again before swallowing.

The strewn path of gold leaves is easy to find, easier to follow. Achilles finds himself wondering, as he follows them, what would happen if Zagreus ran out of leaves. They grow anew almost as soon as they shed, he knows, so there’s little concern to the thought. He has other things to worry about, anyway—

(the sun warms Patroclus, heats his skin up from shadowed, cold mahogany to the dancing, color-filled heat of every color that is good, and as that warmth wends its way into him he stirs, slowly at first; at a certain point he starts to try to kindle a matching heat in Achilles next to him, using his mouth to do it)

— because there is the prince seated on his bed, head in hands, crying, his chin dripping tears to the stone below him.

“Prince,” he says, shifting his spear to his off hand and dropping it on a random half-opened trunk so as to go to Zagreus with hands outstretched.

“Oh,” he says with a hurt little gasp like Achilles has struck him unexpectedly. “Is it time for- er- that’s, I didn’t mean to—“

“I heard things between Meg and you didn’t go so well,” Achilles offers, letting Zagreus place his hands in his and folding them together, folding his hands over them as if he can protect Zagreus like that, with just his own two hands.

“I didn’t,” Zag says, but he can’t finish his sentence because more tears well up, heavily, and he’s interrupted by his own sob.

“I know,” Achilles soothes, sitting down next to Zagreus on his bed and trying not to ache at how desperately he turns his face into Achilles’ shoulder, how easily he gives himself over to even this smallest, most meager of comforts.

He takes one of his hands away from Zagreus’ to place it between his shoulders, covertly flicking away a coating of shed of leaves as he does. Zagreus is dropping them so quickly that some of them are orange, others red: there’s no chance for them to turn to gold before they fall. Achilles doesn’t know what to make of that, just like he doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Zagreus is practically climbing into his lap the longer he sits with him.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Zagreus cries, quietly. He’s the quietest weeper Achilles has ever known. (Is it a part of his nature, Achilles wonders, that his joy is loud and his sorrow quiet? Or is it something trained into him by his lord father and his restrained foster-mother, that lamentations are to be silenced lest they go on eternal?) “We were fighting and I said— I said everything wrong, I was just an _ass_ and- I don’t know how to fix it, I don’t- _why couldn’t I say the right thing_?!”

Achilles has never considered himself a particularly naive person, and yet, with Zagreus here nestled down close to him asking for answers, he finds that he wishes he had richer depths of experience to mine from.

“Sometimes there isn’t a right thing to say, lad,” he tries, rubbing his hand up and down the shuddering prince’s back. “Sometimes there is no right answer. Just a less-destructive one.”

Zagreus makes a frustrated noise and pulls back, scrubbing brutally at his eyes.

“I _know_ ,” he says, face screwed up sour and clouded with anger in as close a reflection to his father as Achilles has ever seen on him, “but all I _had_ were the _worst_ options. The ones that did the most- the biggest- just _damage_. Just hurt. Why- why did I say that?! What’s _wrong_ with me?” He lets out a cry again and curls in on himself. It looks almost like a parody of his stretches, if ones curved to a bend of melancholy instead of triumph: the storm has broken, but only seems to be raging down on Zagreus himself.

The basso boom of Hades’ wrathful exhortations roll through the hall outside.

Achilles looks to the door, then his prince.

He’s been training him in every weapon he knows. Some he doesn’t, too. Part of it is because Zagreus is a quick study, but just as quickly bored. But the greater part of it is because Achilles knows, intimately, that depth of experience in one area binds one as tightly as any pledge to a king might; if the prince has need of a weapon someday and a bow is the only thing to fall to hand, then Achilles must make certain he can use it. By training him in a diversity of tools, Achilles hopes to give Zagreus more options in life than he, himself, had.

It seems that the Prince’s other tutors have been training him with considerably less diligence.

“You did your best,” Achilles soothes. “You’re young. In the scheme of things, much younger than Meg, I think. You’re bound to have less of a hold on your emotions. That’s just the way of things.”

“I wanted to be better,” Zagreus says, softly, so softly that Achilles thinks perhaps he’s starting to calm, but then he says, softer yet, “I wanted to be _better_ ,” and Achilles finds he has to fold him into his arms and kiss at the crown of his head to abate the storm of tears he’s pouring down onto himself.

Better, Achilles does not ask, because he is a man, and not a godling, than _who_?

He thinks he knows the answer to that one anyway.

And then one day, as suddenly as the sun rising, Zagreus is no longer a godling giving a boy’s gifts (albeit a godly boy). He is a man as Achilles is a man, and giving—

“I can’t accept this,” Achilles objects, looking with some longing regardless at the ambrosia in its perfectly-palmable bottle.

“Nonsense!” Zagreus says, crossing his arms and leaning back. Defensive, though he’s couching it behind an air of blustery cheer. “If anybody does it’s you, sir. I can’t think you enough for what you’ve done for me. All you’ve done for me.”

He’s known his prince for long enough now that he can feel, just barely, that edge of a storm approaching.

“Well,” he says softly, seeing no real virtue in bringing that cloud down on Zagreus, “thank you, then. I shall enjoy it deeply.”

Zagreus colors with pleasure, and he turns his head this way and that with those bright gem-shaded eyes of his, and he smiles and he nods and he turns to leave, glowing with pleasure at a job well-done.

Something pulls him back, though, quickly, in an acrobatic pivot that Achilles knows _he_ didn’t teach him. He opens his mouth to comment on it, curious, but-

“I met a shade,” he says, “in Elysium,” he says, “who said something…”

\- he feels his jaw snap shut, feels his face move without his permission.

“Be on your way, Prince,” he says, firmly, “you have plenty of work yet to do if you’re to find your mother.”

“Yes,” he agrees, easy, charming, tilting his head again, inspecting Achilles with both of his eyes in that way of his, one and then the other, but subtler now. “You’re right, of course.” He is a man now, after all, not a godling. He stays calm and he takes his leave with poise and dignity; Achilles nods at him with more of the same.

Yet Achilles finds his gaze pinned at the spot between Zagreus’ shoulders rigidly as he goes, trying to calm the wild pounding of his own heart.

(“You should join us out there,” insists Patroclus, his gaze cold as iron, his grip firmer than that on Achilles’ wrist. “Will you leave me to it, then, all alone?”)

Caught there at the very edge of Zagreus’ chiton along his back, dangling so loosely as to fall with the next bouncing step he takes, is a golden leaf. Another one is drifting down behind him to the floor, glinting as it reflects candlelight in the gloom.

Achilles reflects, ruefully, stepping forward to retrieve the little flickers of gold and set them in his pocket alongside the other he was given years and ages ago, that Zagreus is not the only one poorly-equipped in key areas.

He, too, wished to be better.


	2. Ablutions, details of personal taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Achilles encounters a few people, several of whom he wishes not to have.

* * *

Thus, about his prince, Achilles has noticed over time that-

(a man now, not a godling, indisputably yet impossible for him to pinpoint _when_ the critical moment happened, if there ever indeed was such a moment)

\- but that isn’t quite right, is it?

Instead, it’s like this:

Zagreus, for reasons known only to himself, seems to be on a bit of a tear. In quick succession, he reunites the mournful Orpheus and his lost bride, then his father and his own lost bride, and finally Achilles—

“Hey now,” Pat warns, squeezing water from his hair, vain as ever in life about that one thing, “speak carefully now, Achilles, lest you undo some of your prince’s hard work.” His eyes are soft at the edges, though, so Achilles finds that his mate’s threat is likely not so serious after all.

“I only meant,” he says, chagrined regardless, but Patroclus gathers him into his arms and kisses him, slow and lingering. He can still feel him chuckling a little where their mouths join. (The touch of his beard on Achilles’ own smooth face scratches. That, and only that, Achilles is particular about. He wishes to soak in pleasure when their mouths meet, not be scoured away like a bit of stuck-on dirt.)

Achilles inhales sharply, his hands falling to Patroclus’ severely-cut waist. They’re alone in the baths of Elysium, standing knee-deep in water dredged up from the heat of Tartarus, with nary a soul (or a Shade, which is really the more important part here) to be seen. They’ve lain together since they were reunited, reacquainting themselves with their shared terrain as eagerly as wolves returned to their ancestral hills, but more is always welcome, never enough.

They had both been surprised to find it easy to make love, easier even than when they had yet lived. Realistically speaking they have no flesh to speak of anymore, simply the stuff a man is made of at his deepest core. That allows in the act a certain expressiveness, a particular sort of intention, that is hard to describe but easy to feel; what the body may have executed imperfectly, the soul delivers more purely.

(It’s a surprise to Achilles, but Patroclus gives a satisfied sigh and tosses his head, his dark hair coiling around his shoulders like a river cast in twilight. “As I expected,” he says, a smile playing about his serious mouth when he sees Achilles’ confusion. “Who wants to imagine their dead in these acts? It would be natural to simply pretend we cannot,” he clarifies, and that startles a laugh out of Achilles.)

Seeking to make just such a spiritual delivery now, Achilles leans in, slinging his arms up and around Pat’s neck. Patroclus leans down which is unnecessary because they’re both the same height (“You’re a little shorter,” Patroclus insists, holding the spear they’d just used as a measuring stick, “just by a finger or two.”), and—

“ASTERIUS,” bugles Theseus, _gods damn him_ to Olympus and back, “I am ready to SCRUB YOUR BACK whenever you are, my greatest friend!”

Achilles startles and Patroclus jumps. They do not part.

“You have no need, my king,” says the bull-man, nodding to the set of myrmidons hurriedly escaping from the water before Theseus traps them there, as is his way, with unwanted tales of glory. (Achilles has visited under ten times so far, and yet he already can recite in frankly tiresome detail Theseus’ version of his emergence from the labyrinth. He’d be more interested to hear Asterius’ version, if just for a change of pace, but the bull man remains silent and offers only a diffident shrug when asked.)

“NONSENSE!” Thunders Theseus, hopping into the water with great eagerness and little heed of the waves he sends sloshing to and fro, some of which temporarily extinguish the candles lit at one edge of the bath. He turns to his audience and brandishes a washcloth rather like the world’s saddest shield. “Gentlemen, are you leaving so early? The water is still warm! Come and sit with us and we shall spin you a SUCH A TALE!”

He glistens.

“The water is always warm, my king. It is a natural hot spring.”

“All the better for it! Come, I am certain you two are riveted to the spot waiting for my invitation— you may sit beside us both!”

“Oh, no,” Achilles hears Patroclus say, or maybe that’s just him saying it under his breath while Patroclus shares the sentiment in his heart.

Asterius washes Theseus’ back. Achilles, at a loss for something to do while being prattled at, re-oils Patroclus’ hair so his curls hang tight and glossy around his face, runs his fingers through his beard to soften it and clean his hands of the extra oil.

To Achilles’ and Patroclus’ shared surprise, Theseus does, in fact, end up washing Asterius’ back, and more. He even rouges the ends of Asterius’ horns, screwing up his face intensely as he punctiliously arranges the gradient _just so_. (Achilles had wondered if that was simply a natural coloration, but this makes more sense to him. Theseus, for all his other faults, loves beauty with the earnestness of a man who devotes himself wholly to its worship.)

The champion is, as in all things, excruciatingly thorough. Asterius clearly enjoys the attention, grunting his satisfaction when Theseus stands up in the bath to proclaim his victory. Patroclus certainly enjoys being attended to as well, tipping his head onto Achilles’ shoulder to look up at him with smoldering eyes that promise to return the attentions, and soon.

It’s as he’s walking back to his lord’s great house (he could be, in the manner of a shade, from one place to another in the blink of an eye, but Achilles finds he enjoys the cool dew on his feet) that he thinks of his prince.

Who will rouge _his_ horns?

After Patroclus has repaid his attentions and then some, Achilles digs from his chiton the little golden treasures he has kept by his side for so long. It means nothing to share them with Patroclus, because everything of his has always also been Patroclus’.

They do look small in his hands, though. The prince isn’t small, is he? (Is he?) He’s less overtly muscled than either of them, but his presence is larger. (Achilles suspects that despite that, or because of it, Zagreus might be able to beat them all together in feats of strength.) He is taller than Hypnos and his mother, definitely Theseus, and past that…

“From a god,” Patroclus says, amused, teasing the three little gold leaves with a nail. His buttocks is bare to the fields of Elysium, and Achilles spends a moment looking over the chiseled shape of it with wanton appreciation. “I think I know which one.”

“You probably do,” Achilles agrees, leaning his head forward to pillow it on Patroclus’ shoulder. He breathes slowly in and out, lets his eyes fall shut for a moment, the sweat cooling slowly on his skin. He can’t resist, though, so he adds: “They’re from our patron prince, the god of blood.”

“Hm,” says Patroclus, shifting so he can run his fingers up through Achilles’ hair, teasing it the wrong way as he likes to do when he thinks Achilles is being full of himself. “You should string these on something. Wear them as the token they are.”

Achilles remains silent for a while, watching Patroclus turn them this way and that. Pat, not given to words for the sake of them, waits, inspecting the leaves closely at all angles while he does.

“I shouldn’t like him to get the wrong impression,” Achilles finally says, sighing. “And I doubt that his lovers would appreciate it.”

“Lovers?” Patroclus raises his eyebrows. “Are there so many?”

You have eyes, Achilles almost says, but that’s so revealing as to be a total ceding of the field. Instead, he says: “A Fury, and Death himself.”

“I did know he was generous,” Patroclus murmurs, run through with deep amusement like a current through the ocean, “but it is good to know that he is inclined to share even himself.”

Achilles, having nothing to say to that, closes his eyes.

“Awfully generous of him,” Patroclus muses, “considering how little of him there is.”

“Is that a jab on his height?” Achilles asks, but Pat won’t answer past a sneaky grin. “Regardless, he is entangled as we are.”

Patroclus makes a dismissive noise. “They do things differently here,” he says, rolling his head gently to tease out a crick. “But we don’t have to. In life, you hosted your fair share of guests to our bed, and I the same.”

“I have only just regained my place at your side,” Achilles objects, annoyance pressing at his brow and folding it to a crease. “Do you think I would roam so quickly into the bed of another, after all these years of waiting?”

“You’re so selfish under a mask of pride,” Patroclus says, the bow of his mouth drawn down. “Just like always. Did you ever think that maybe I want a taste of your prince, Achilles?”

“There’s a, um,” Dusa says, bobbling in the air anxiously, “yeah, there’s a door that shows up, when they want to use it. I don’t clean in there, though— not that I’m _avoiding_ anything it’s- just that- Nyx told me that I _shouldn’t go into anybody’s private chambers and I really don’t want to intrude soIdon’tthinkit’smyplaceto-_ ”

“Hold,” Achilles says, putting up a hand. Dusa’s fanged mouth snaps shut. She looks like she’s about to cry, but she usually does. Achilles tries not to take her current expression personally. “It will only be there when one of the household needs it, is that so?”

“Oh!! Yes,” Dusa says, now bobbling in the air with considerably less anxiety. “Why? Would you like to use the baths, sir?”

“I was just curious,” Achilles says absently, for luck of all lucks but there is the back of his prince sailing just out of view as he steps into the main hall. Dusa gives a funny little laugh and smiles.

“Well for what it’s worth you always look _very_ clean, master Achilles.”

“Thank you,” he says, bowing his head, because Dusa, whose main job is in fact to clean, must certainly be some authority on the matter. (He’s never really reflected on it before, but she herself always looks quite well-put-together, doesn’t she? Certainly she never has any dry scales, let alone loose or chipped ones.)

“OH!! Well no please don’t worry sir it was _justalittleobservationandi’mgoingtoleavenow, lotstodosoyeahbye!!!_ ”

Achilles peers up at the darkness of the ceiling uncertainly after her. It’s like that that Zagreus finds him, bouncing into the room with a bright smile and a spring to his step that means he’s found some horrible new way to undermine his father’s sense of confidence in the domain’s security.

“Lose something up there, sir?” Zagreus asks, peering up with his red eye tilted furthest to the ceiling.

“Just Miss Dusa,” Achilles replies, his eyes falling to land on the flecks of red still stuck to Zagreus’ knees. The Styx takes care of most blood and gore that cling to Zagreus, but it’s a simple soak in water. (A wonder that it keeps him as neat as it does, actually. Perhaps he comes by some of that freshness by dint of his godhood?)

“I don’t really know how she does that,” Zagreus agrees, crossing his arm and craning his neck to look up even harder, as if by doing so he’ll unlock some key secret to the whole matter. “Technically speaking the ceiling is supposed to be there precisely to prevent unexpected things from coming up or down, I think, so it isn’t doing a very good job of it if you ask me.”

“It holds the rock off our heads,” Achilles replies evenly, amused, “and that’s good enough for me. What can I do for you, lad?”

“I wanted to see how things are going between you and Patroclus, and give you something,” Zagreus says, rummaging in his chiton to pull out (oh no, Achilles thinks, and also: _ah, yes_ ) a squared bottle of—“That’s the real stuff, sir. I hope you two will enjoy it.”

“We did the last one you gave to us,” Achilles says, shaking his head disbelievingly at the hefty weight of the bottle in his hand. Zagreus smiles at him, and when Achilles thinks that Zagreus thinks that Achilles isn’t looking, the smile turns shy yet effusive. “You are too generous with us.” He hefts the bottle up to the light. The stuff illuminates as clearly as a gemstone despite the murkiness of the liquid.

“I think that’s impossible,” Zagreus insists, shaking his head. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve been able to do because of your training. There isn’t anything in the world I could give you that would be enough.”

“Funny of you to say that,” Achilles says, sighing, putting the bottle away inside his robes. It hangs heavily against his waist. “Pat and I feel the same for you.”

“Oh,” Zagreus says, scruffling at his hair in such a manner that it sticks up even more than usual. He gives a little laugh but says, in the moment, nothing more.

“Lad,” Achilles says, breaking from his guard spot to step forward and cup in his palm the elbow of his prince, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of course,” Zagreus says, abruptly alert and poised, body held so tightly that Achilles feels he could string him up and fire him as a bow. “Anything for you,” he says, and then gives a blink, just one, before finishing, low and not _quite_ ragged, “Sir.”

“I’m about to go to his side,” Achilles says, knowing that no further clarification is needed, seeing the happiness blossom on his brutally generous prince’s face as he understands, “but before I do, I was hoping to get a wash. I don’t know that a shade collects grime standing about like this, but… it would be nice, I think, to make myself presentable before I’m to go.”

“Of course,” Zagreus says, his smile melting broad. “I mean, you always look presentable to my eyes, of course,” and he forges on so casually that Achilles would have missed it if he didn’t know to look for it: there goes a little leaf, fluttering down past his ear to land at his burning heel and ignite into nothingness, “but I’m happy to help, really.”

It’s been a while since Achilles was in the prince’s room. It’s just as chaotic as before.

“Just a moment,” Zagreus says, reaching for the empty space between a lyre Achilles doesn’t think he’s ever seen him play and a mysterious heap of scrolls and jars he _definitely_ has never seen him use. “I can never quite remember if it’s a clockwise or an upside-down twist…” He starts fiddling with thin air, talking himself through it in the way Zagreus often does.

( _Comes of being an only child,_ Patroclus had said, which had startled a laugh out of Asterius. _Or a lonely one,_ Theseus had said in a moment of frankly baffling insight. Achilles had not missed how Asterius’ eyes glowed as he turned his gaze back to his battle-partner.

_My king,_ he had said, and they had finally taken their leave together.)

Achilles waits patiently, taking the chance to look around as he does. There are a few new items since the last time he was in here (is that a mosaic of _him_?), but it otherwise looks much the same—

— ah. There are two important differences to note, actually: a black cloak, crumpled and shoved haphazardly in a basket of clothes, and a bright blue women’s tunic tossed over the end of one of the bedposts.  
  
“There we go,” Zagreus says with considerable enthusiasm, flinging his arms open wide. A door slaps itself into existence, billowing steam at its seams like it contains a very irate dragon. “One fresh wash room, all yours to use, Achilles sir!”

“Thank you, lad,” he says, noting that the room is rapidly warming. He can feel his hair itching to go wild in the humidity. Alas. “Do you mind going in with me? In case there are any fixtures I need your help with,” he says, and feels like a dirty old man for how harshly he has to work to keep his tone neutral and his voice slow.

“Oh…” Zagreus looks down at himself. His eyes find the specks of blood Achilles had noted before, his hands the rub of dirt along his palms and under his nails. He’s in astonishingly good condition for what he gets up to on a daily basis, but he wouldn’t exactly pass as _clean_ , Achilles thinks. Not by Dusa’s standards, certainly. “I think I’m due for a wash myself, if that’s all right with you, sir…?”

It is.

Whatever he expected, it isn’t this.

The tiled floor of the bathroom, such as it is, swims in a sea of glistening black with only stark white gleams to show where the water rises and falls around them. There are glints and shines of colors, all the colors, at the very edges of Achilles’ vision, but when he turns to admire them fully they’re gone. The sky overhead is black as night, flickers with stars, but when he tries to identify familiar constellations Achilles finds none he knows. It is as if he is looking at a wholly alien sky.

Zagreus sets to work disrobing as if this is all quite normal. (Gods, Achilles reflects with considerable fondness. Even his beloved prince is made strange to him at times by nature of his divinity.) Achilles follows his example in silence, casting his eye around to take it in perhaps less openly than he had initially. There’s a marble tub set into the floor, a pile of remarkably fluffy towels in blood red, and even a low-rimmed wooden box stuffed to near-bursting with soaps and oils and other grooming items. That they mostly look untouched isn’t a surprise to Achilles; he knows them to be new, a gift from the Queen and her rich garden.

“It’s quite something,” Achilles finally says, setting his spear aside gently. He reaches down to secure the laurel-leaves and the ambrosia in his chiton before he loosens his belt. A soft noise attracts his attention, and when he turns his head he sees Zagreus tip-toeing into the bath, hissing a little as his feet touch the water. Like this, naked and unadorned in the regalia of the house of Hades save his laurels (the ones on her majesty’s head are a simple ornament, Achilles knows, perhaps made from her lord husband’s own shed leaves), Zagreus looks like any other comely youth tiptoeing his way into water a touch too hot for his tastes.

But as he turns around to sit and face Achilles the illusion of normalcy shatters: there is no ignoring the uncanny brilliance of his stark red eye and glittering green one, no way Achilles could ignore the laurels glinting and way his face spins into a smile more quickly than the Fates themselves could work.

“How do your flames stand up in the water, lad?” Achilles asks, removing the final of his braces and folding them neatly on top of his clothes before he strides over to crouch at water’s edge and dip his wrist in. Not too hot, he thinks, and slides in with one smooth shift of his hips. He spreads his arms to rest against the rim of the bath and gives a slow, pleased sigh. The water comes up to his chest, and though it’s significantly hotter than the water in Elysium, Achilles finds he’s able to adjust to the sting of the heat well enough.

When the silence goes on a little longer than expected, Achilles turns his attention to Zagreus and makes a questioning noise.

“They- stand up well,” Zagreus says, looking a little dazed. He gives himself a shake and sticks one foot up out of the blood red water (being careful to keep the soles of his feet pointed down to avoid offense, there’s a good lad): sure enough, the flames are unquenched, and even hiss water belligerently as they touch the air. “Very well, as you can see.” He puts his foot down again and blinks owlishly.

“Good to see,” Achilles says, letting a fond smile touch at his eyes, his mouth. “What’s all this?” At a motion of his arm to the box of grooming items, Zagreus lights up.

“My mother made them! They smell like herbs, sir, or like flowers even, and not the musty dead ones we burn in the great hall here. They smell like the surface,” he breathes. Achilles knows instantly that this will be easier still than Patroclus had suggested it would be, because the next thing Zagreus does is open his mouth and to say, without a hint of guile, “Would you like to try some out?”

The more well-mannered side of Achilles wants to decline. These goods are luxurious, products of the goddess of verdure herself, and he has no right to use something so sacred as all that. The cannier side, though, sees an opening and takes it. (It sounds in his mind like Pat, and wouldn’t Pat be proud of himself for sowing a little discord in Achilles’ usually-strict mindscape.)

“I can’t say I hope to resist,” Achilles says. He pushes himself out of the bath to flick through the bottles, reading the Queen’s labels and admiring the elegant, curved style of her hand. They’re all clearly for Zagreus, selected carefully— there’s rosemary soaps and dill lotions and ironwort oils, mint in several varieties and every type of good, even a little lavender cream that helpfully has an arrow for where on the hand it should be applied sketched on the label.

(Achilles privately wishes the Queen the best on her attempt to tame her wild son, though some things cannot be undone: detailed grooming rituals are best learned at a parent’s hip early on. He cannot see Lord Hades rubbing a cream lovingly onto a young Zagreus’s upturned face, as his own father did for him when he was yet too young to hold a blade.)

Selecting a particular glass bottle, Achilles motions to Zagreus.

“Here, lad.”

Zagreus obeys without question, moving carefully so as to keep the water in the bath as still as possible. He’s being very quiet, Achilles notes absently, working the cap open slowly with a hand. It speaks to his trust in Achilles that he doesn’t even ask what for, simply moves to his command. (That sparks a heat in Achilles the longer he dwells on it, one to rival the sear of the bath, so he tries not to. He’s bare at the waist right now, after all, with no red water to disguise his mind.)

“Have you ever met ironwort?” Achilles asks, sliding back into the water next to Zagreus, close enough that he can feel the lick of his flames even through the water. “It’s an herb common enough where I come from. The old women and men drink a tea from it every morning, swear it to be the secret to their longevity.”

“Is it?” Zagreus asks, tilting his head a bit to inspect the bottle clasped carefully in Achilles’ hand, green eye leading him over the script. Achilles doesn’t consider himself a large man, certainly not compared to a giant like Lord Hades, but the size of the bottle in his palm is making him realize that Zagreus’ size must have come from his lady mother.

“Who knows?” Achilles chuckles, swiping his hair out of his face and turning it up into a haphazard bun. “Regardless, it is a familiar smell. Would you like my help in having a scrub with it?”

“I can…” Zagreus says, leaning down a little, licking his bottom lip and then biting it just a bit, and all it while looking straight at Achilles. He looks puzzled, but not unpleasantly so. Simply uncertain of this, all of this. Achilles finds that he can’t stop tracing the swoop of shadow perpetually cast over his red eye, the hint of his nipple through the red water, the glow of pink at his throat from his red blood. “I don’t want to put you out,” he finally says, and there it is again, that shyness: Achilles finds he is developing a taste for it. (A little gleam of the eye, a lowering of the lashes: these are the ways Patroclus signals his interest as well. Patroclus, though, he tips his head up to Zagreus’ down, reflecting a key difference in their internal states that Achilles does not find he can explain, given everything else he knows about both of them.)

“I offered,” he says, turning his wrist to release the rich, velvety smell of the oil out between them. “If you wish, you sit yourself down between my knees and I’ll start at the nape of your neck.”

“I don’t want to keep you from your meeting,” Zagreus says, sitting thigh to thigh with Achilles in a bath set in sea of glistening black and shadowed white to match the eternal shadow cast onto the curve of a cheek. It’s not so strange to look out on that endless expanse after all, not when he finds that he knows a smaller version of it on his prince’s face.

“We have all the time in the world to trade between us now,” Achilles says, tipping the bottle so the potion pools in the palm of his hand, “because of you. Down, lad,” Achilles says, firmly, and tries again not to think about how gratifying Zagreus’ instant obedience is.

Zagreus is a god, and Achilles is a servant in his father’s house. He reminds himself of this repeatedly as he runs a soap-soaked cloth up the narrowness of his throat, down the arch of his ribs, and Zagreus sighs as gently as the wind itself. Persephone made these fine-smelling things for her son, who is the son of the house _he_ serves, Achilles reminds himself as he washes the soap from Zagreus’ chest and feels, through the cloth, the peak of a tightened nipple. Zagreus is his lord’s son, he thinks as he draws the cloth along the back of his knee and feels the flex of his thigh against the palm of his hand. Zagreus is-

Zagreus is a man, and so is Achilles, and gods help him but he wants to see what Zagreus has yet to learn from him that he can teach.

To his surprise, but not Patroclus’, it becomes a frequent occurence.

Zagreus finds him whenever he’s looking a little tatty around the edges, whenever he’s got blood soaked into his scalp that isn’t his or, perhaps, even when it is. (Especially when it is, Achilles thinks, drawing his nails gently across the little hairs at the nape of Zagreus’ neck and pretending not to see him draw in a tight breath.)

They wash together often, talking idly of whatever new fancy Theseus has allowed to fall into that empty urn he calls a head, or of decor choices Zagreus is thinking of putting the House Contractor to work on. Achilles tells Zagreus of Elysium’s newest fancy, inspired by his lady mother, and admires the uninterrupted line of his throat as his prince throws back his head to laugh. (It would look look better interrupted, says Pat later, and proceeds to demonstrate precisely his meaning with dedication.)

Zagreus offers initially to wash Achilles in turn. He seems hurt when he’s turned down, his mouth set into a thoughtful, melancholy line as Achilles rubs at a strange smear of orange a bone hydra left on him or scrubs away a splatter of green from an especially unpleasant chariot trampling. The storm inside him, always one mountain range away at most, rattles at his frame frequently at first.

Over time the lash of that rain eases as he begins to understand that the point, really, is this: to be washed and touched and scrubbed by Achilles. Over time, he seems to come to ease with that point, though it’s clear he still doesn’t quite understand how this all fits into the world as he knows it.

Zagreus seeks to reconcile his perceived debt by continuing his gifts of ambrosia, bundling the whole thing, if somewhat clumsily, into the underworld culture of gift exchange that Queen Persephone seems to find so refreshing.

Achilles, even after all these years, is used to helping his mother with her weaving, used to his father singing his praises in his quavering voice, used to Patroclus twined around him, close, like the orchid to its roots. Were Zagreus less inclined to come close and be touched, were he less inclined to blossom into a changed state at the slightest kind word, were he less inclined to going out of his way to help others, Achilles would be fine with accepting it as this: that Zagreus prefers best to share his feelings in that way, in the shape of bottles and stoppers and gleaming bits of life masquerading as liquid.

Not for the first time, though, Achilles has the sinking suspicion that Zagreus is less making a choice than he is reaching out, desperately, for the only tool he knows to use.

Achilles is leaving the prince’s rooms, smelling particularly lavender-y around the nail beds, when he practically walks into the Fury known as Megara.

“My apologies,” he says, and means it, because though he knows she could flay him to the bone and make him _truly_ regret his inattention, the first fact of the matter is that almost walking into anybody is impolite, regardless of how skilled they are with a weapon.

“Look where you’re going,” she says. (Achilles doesn’t often go for women, not really, but by gods that _voice_ is incredible.) “What are you-“

She sniffs.

Achilles raises his chin, waiting.

“It’s you. With Zag,” she says, and jerks her head toward the general direction of where he opens the door to the bathing room. “You’ve been washing him.” Her eyes are brutally sharp, glinting orange and made more striking for it by the blue of her hair, of her wing, of her clothes. “Making him smell like herbs. The surface.”

“Aye,” Achilles says simply. He has no inclination to hide his actions, less inclination than that to overstep. Patroclus might have his thoughts on the matter, but the fact is that one of them has served in the house of Hades for uncounted years now and it isn’t him.

“Hm,” she says, snorting in a peculiarly elegant fashion. Her hands fall to her hips. (It doesn’t escape his notice, the perfect gleam of lacquer set on her nails. She is as impeccably put together as the lady Nyx, albeit in a different style.) It must be the voice, he thinks, or her muscled physique that gives her such leeway in his mind. She is not so insane as the stories would have led him to believe, at least— he is not yet in five pieces with more to be cut. “We’ve been talking about you. Than and I, that is.”

Death and the Fury, talking about him. (Talking about him touching the prince, Patroclus corrects later. Talking about him touching _their_ prince.) Achilles is abruptly surprised to remember that shades can, in fact, sweat. It’s only fair, he concedes, since they can also make love. Who knew that being dead was so visceral?

“I see,” Achilles says, betraying none of his anxieties. He feels closer to the battlefield than he’s been in eons. Here, so close to the rush of fury and blood, he feels his old calm and decisiveness rise up. “What was your conclusion on the matter? And Master Death’s?”

“Anybody that can get Zag clean behind the ears is more than welcome to whatever kind of pathetic gratitude he’s capable of showing,” she says, sneering. Achilles clamps down on himself as hard as he can to keep the anger from flashing across his face— yes, the Fury has a reputation, but this is the _real_ reason he has avoided her for so long: he dislikes the nature of her and Zagreus’ relationship, even as he knows that Zagreus loves her keenly, for what reason he cannot fathom.

(He’d come to find Zagreus a few days ago, seeking one of their usual appointments, but paused with the door just barely opened. He’d realized his mistake too late— the crack of a whip, and then the pained cry of the prince, startlingly throaty, had echoed far too loudly in his ears for comfort. He had slid the door shut with all his skill and made a run for it, caught only by Dusa’s sympathetic eyes. “Oh yeah,” she’d said later when he tried to, fumblingly, apologize. “Don’t worry. We’ve all been there. Sure hope Zag gets a lock on his door one of these years. How many gemstones can it cost, really?”)

“I aim not to take more than I am given,” Achilles says, bowing slightly less than is strictly polite, if only because if he gives her the full courtesy she’s due he’ll end up with his head in her breast. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Hold,” she says as he turns to walk away. When Achilles looks over his shoulder at her she has her whip out. She’s palming the handle with confidence, drawing her well-groomed fingertips along of the braided length with menace. “Zagreus adores you,” she says, her mouth pulled straight as an arrow into the heart of a foe. “If you intend to play with him a little and then drop him to the side, you’ll face my wrath. Thanatos’ too. With Zag, you play to win, or you don’t play at all.”

Achilles looks at her in silence for a good long moment. Hades is still booming outrage at shades queued up before him in the main hall. Distantly the scrape of claws on stone signifies that Cerberus is getting up to do his doggy rounds. Low chatter and the clink of ice, the clatter of glass, escapes faintly from the lounge across the hall.

“Do you understand?” Megara says, her shoulders shifting, her stand widening. Her wing raises up ready behind her. (Skirmishes in the house proper are forbidden, Achilles knows, under strictest penalty. But here she is, squaring up to punish a would-be betrayer who has sunk dangerously, perilously close to the breast of Prince Zagreus, dear to them all. Who could fault her?)

“Aye,” Achilles says finally, nodding. “The prince is important to me, ma’am. My life would not be the same without him in it, and I don’t think for the better.”

“Hmph,” the Fury says, pulling herself back from battle-readiness with a heavy-breathing intensity that stirs Achilles’ blood more than he finds comfortable. “Good.”

They start in their different directions once more, Achilles in particular walking with real motivation.

“That’s Megara to you,” she says, tone stern. “That’s an order, shade.”

“Aye,” Achilles says again, looking over his shoulder at her as she stands with one hand lightly resting on the door to Zagreus’ room, one hand on the whip she’s furled up at her side. Her face is turned forward, but her orange eyes have slid to keep him in her line of sight.

“Be on your way,” she commands, and as he was already working on that Achilles finds he has no objections to be made. He leaves, the click of the door as it opens and closes behind him sounding entirely too loud to his ears.

Perhaps, Achilles muses, waving to Patroclus where he lies reclined under a twisted shade tree, he is starting to understand the Fury’s appeal after all.

After all, Achilles muses, watching Patroclus wave back to him, there is nothing wrong with loving with true ferocity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all for dropping such kind words my way! I aim to provide such good solid meals as these.
> 
> I had a giant picture of Meg up for reference as I wrote the last part of this chapter. Draw your own conclusions based on the result.
> 
> I also ran around in the game a little to get as accurate height references as I could for Zag. Strictly speaking, he stands lower than his mother in the hall, but his stance is wider, so I think if he stood up straight he'd probably be a bit taller than her. I made up Achilles and Patroclus' height comparison, though.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/crownofpins)


	3. On the form, divine or otherwise, and the shapes it may take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The return of the goddess of verdure has implications in more than just Tartarus.

* * *

In such a fashion, with diligent attention, this brings to light in his prince a certain

— _ugh_.

(When he smiles his eyes narrow just the slightest, as if in a vain attempt to disguise the glorious, unrestrained happiness radiating from him as light does from the rising sun. Nobody, not even his father now, can truly turn their faces from that warming light. They are all caught in his gravity, though some fall into his orbit more quickly than others.)

(—did he become a liar in death? It isn’t just his _smile_ Achilles can’t turn away from— the low rumble of his half-laugh when Pat makes a dry joke, the exasperated sigh he breathes out, long and impatient, through his nose as he steps up out of the entrance to the house with red sliding down his body, pooling at his collarbones before tracing the line of his sternum—

the finger of darkness between his chiton and his skin, and the spot between—)

“We’re dead though,” Achilles objects, which Patroclus takes as his invitation to pop one of the odd little fruits he’s been rolling between his thumb and forefinger into Achilles’ mouth. The flavor explodes onto his tongue; Achilles chokes.

“Perhaps your mother should have made sure you opened your mouth when she dunked you into the Styx,” Patroclus drawls, rolling the round red fruit between his fingers. His expression is vexingly amused. “Even in death, your tongue is as reticent as a maiden promised to a temple of Artemis.”

“No,” Achilles says, reaching for the little thing between Patroclus’s fingers. When he doesn’t let go, simply lets his hand come along for the journey, Achilles feels a shiver roll through him that has nothing to do with the exuberant plants they’ve been inspecting all day. “It was good, I promise you. It simply surprised me, that’s all.”

“It is sharp to the taste,” Patroclus agrees, watching with lowered lashes as Achilles parts his lips and lets the red fruit press between them. “Not displeasing, though. It’s a bright flavor. Strange to find in this place.” Achilles takes the fruit into his mouth with a deft slip of the tongue and is rewarded by the press of Patroclus’ thumb at his lip, the slide of his index in his mouth just at his teeth, preventing him from biting down.

They lock eyes. Achilles can feel his own pulse, imagines he can feel Patroclus’ pulse. His eyes are dark, piercing. (It feels as if he could wander for an eternity in them; he knows he will try.)

Achilles breaks the fruit in his mouth with a hard press of the tongue, swallows the acid-sweet of it down, tilting his head back to do it without spilling. Patroclus presses down on his tongue, the faintest of pressures, and Achilles falls to his knees with ease, gaze fixed up at his sun, his moon, the one who hung them all in his sky.

The fruit is forgotten; there are other things to be set upon and swallowed down.

“I didn’t mean to cause such difficulty,” says the queen, a hand to her mouth. “In fact, I didn’t know my presence had caused anything at all untoward to happen. I do apologize.”

“It’s of no inconvenience, ma’am,” Achilles says, shaking his head. “None at all. I simply mentioned it so as to make you aware of it.”

“Keep an eye on it,” Lord Hades booms from behind his desk, glancing up with a furrowed brow. The shade petitioning him natters on without any indication that it cares about his lack of interest. (Achilles is thankful that the shades usually speak in voices that only Lord Hades can hear. The unceasing din would be enough to drive anybody to madness, he fears. Perhaps Lord Hades himself does not mind, himself, or perhaps, more likely, this constant chatter is one of the many reasons for his infamously short temper.) “If there are any signs of danger or, worse, interference from Olympus, let me know immediately.”

“Of course, my lord,” Achilles agrees, but

“It’s just a whole bunch of ripening fruit?” Zagreus asks, an eyebrow raised. He stands in front of Achilles with a cocked hip, one hand resting on it.

“Aye,” Achilles replies. “Small and, for the most part, inoffensive.”

“For the most part?” Zagreus presses, his other eyebrow rising up to join its partner.

“Hmm,” Achilles says, and then allows a smile to escape and play about his mouth for a moment. “The Champion of Elysium, as it happens, isn’t so much of a fan of the first things to have come ripe.”

Zagreus laughs suddenly, the deep kind from your belly, and the handsome joyousness of him is laid out there so plainly in front of Achilles that he finds he has to clench his hands, dig in his nails to his spear to keep from reaching out to touch him. (If he laid a hand on his breast would he feel his heart burning with such vitality? If he laid a hand on his cheek, would he feel the flush of victory still running hot on his skin? For Lord Hades is at his desk returned silently from his errand, and Zagreus is back after, and every shade that serves here in the House knows what that means.)

“Did he make a terrible fool of himself?”

The gods are different, Achilles muses, watching Zagreus wipe delighted tears from the corners of his eyes. Patricide, here, is no great matter, nor is filicide. Either god will rise again from the river Styx, unscarred by their struggle. There is no great change regardless of who rises first from the river, and lucky for it, as Lord Hades has not returned second in quite some time.

(Zagreus watches his father’s desk from the corner of his eye with such trepidation, even now as Lord Hades works to remember how to speak to him with courtesy, or something approaching it. Zagreus simmers and spits with resentment, with defensive caution, at the slightest attention turned his way by his father. He is a good man, a gentle man, a fierce man, a warrior any man would be lucky to have by his side in battle— but he is a boy, too, always, somewhere inside of him, and one who is used to sharper words than he knows to hold defense against.)

“A dreadful fool, yes, and more than usual. Pat tells me he spit it out immediately, but some of the juice squirted out when he bit down and stained his chiton without him knowing, so he had a stained front like a child as he made a great speech about the evil of the invading army, eradication and extirpation, and so on.”

Zagreus laughs brightly. Behind him in the great hall Achilles hears the deep silence of Lord Hades listening.

Perhaps the gods are not so different after all. (Not all of them, anyway.)

“I’ll bring you some,” Achilles says, thinking already about the best plants he’d seen, the ones with the roundest fruits and the most vivid colors and the most luminous taste. “Pat will help me gather them too, I’m sure. He’s been trying his hand with catching fish in nets, too. Hasn’t caught any yet, but he’ll figure it out.”

“If Theseus hates them, I’m bound to love them, and better still if they’re gathered by your hands,” Zagreus says, smiling still with his green eye gone bright at the rim like the edge of a leaf illuminated by the sun at noon. “Thank you, Master Achilles. And please thank Patroclus for me as well.”

“No thanks needed, lad.”

There’s a brief pause. Achilles, because he’s listening for it, hears the scratching of Lord Hades’ quill resume hastily. The queen is in her garden, last Achilles saw of her.

“I suppose you could simply pick some for yourself the next time you pass through Elysium,” Achilles muses, tilting his head.

“I’ll wait,” Zagreus says, hasty and assured all at the same time, as if striking for a spot he’s been waiting to see— a spot exposed, soft, unprotected. “Even if I see some, it wouldn’t be the same, right?”

“No?” Achilles blinks.

“As a gift from both of your hands,” Zagreus says, flushing at the very tips of his ears and trying to hide it by bouncing back onto the balls of his feet. “I have to go— I have a thing for Lernie I want to see through.”

“Lernie?” Achilles asks, puzzled, but Zagreus is already loping off, waving his goodbye with broad enthusiasm. He looks for, and is unsurprised to see, a leaf shed along his path, though just one.

There’s a sound, a chime, and suddenly Master Thanatos is standing close by, watching Zagreus vanish around the corner and into his room. Achilles tenses his belly and holds himself still rather than startling into a guard as his instincts urge him to. Normally when Thanatos materializes, it’s at his balcony to float quietly and watch the river. Still, it feels catastrophically rude to point his spear at him simply because he has come closer. There is something birdlike about him in Achilles’ mind: urgent and harried, sharp-eyed and assessing, yet always ready to take to wing again and circle away to a safer location.

“Hm,” Thanatos says, eyes sliding to the side to inspect Achilles. Achilles, perhaps more comfortable with death at his side than most, still finds it a bit unnerving that he’s floating there silently. (Birds, at the very least, do not hover above the ground with no visible means of doing so.)

“You just missed him, I’m afraid,” Achilles says, because he knows that the best defense is a strong offense.

“I always miss him,” Master Thanatos says with an air altogether at odds with his words. He’s smiling just a little, in the eyes only, his grip on his scythe steady and at ease.

“I understand,” Achilles says, because he _does_ , deeply, keenly, in a way he could wander for eternity in— and only _can_ because of Zagreus.

“It is good to know that when I cannot be with him, there are others by his side,” says Death, brother of Sleep, son of Night herself. “He is…”

His face twists, not with dislike, but with such an intensity of emotion that it’s clear he simply doesn’t know how to give it voice. He sighs deeply and finally turns his head to look at Achilles. His expression is almost beseeching.

“I know,” Achilles says, voice soft, because he does.

“He is special,” Thanatos finally says, eyes narrowing. “To me. To others.” He considers Achilles, face unreadable, eyes more piercing than the tip of his own naked weapon. “To you, I hope.”

Megara, fierce and brutal in her love, and now Thanatos, consistent and devoted. Achilles would be honored by their attentions, in some fashion, if he also didn’t find it deeply unnerving. Zagreus, his prince, is convivial and eager to please; that nature of his makes it easy to forget, terribly easy to forget, that he too is a god, one for whom the world bends its ear to make his will known. (And what is his will? Friendships, kinships, an unceasing struggle to improve the lives of his various kith and kin, a path to their happiness drawn with his own bone and blood. Oh, yes. Thanatos is right, of course: _Zagreus is special_.)

Thanatos, drifting patiently at Achilles’ side, is a god too. But when Achilles inspects him, he looks tired, marked with dark circles under his eyes; his lips are chapped, just a bit; his hair is thrown askew, and his cheekbones, always sharp, seem to be cut just a bit more fiercely than usual. There is war on the surface, Achilles knows. There is always war, but this one seems to have been going on for quite some time, and Thanatos is no more inclined to ignore his duties than Zagreus’ lord father is.

“There is nobody like him,” Achilles says of Zagreus, bowing his head. “Though you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“I don’t,” Thanatos says, sighing and rolling his shoulders. “But it’s good to hear.” The illumination of his sigil forms in the air above him, heralding his departure.

“Before you go,” Achilles says, surprising himself. It surprises Thanatos too, because he turns fully in the air to face Achilles, his sigil fading. “If you’d like, I can ask the Queen if she’d prepare you a salve.”

“A salve?” Thanatos asks, running a hand through his hair to straighten it. A middle part is a tragic look for most, in Achilles’ experience, but Master Thanatos is so striking that he manages to pull it off. ( _Godly good looks_ , Pat chuckles later, forearms in the shallows of the river, drawing up the net he’d taken from some good-for-nothing gladiator who had wanted to challenge his more famous mate, _I don’t know what you expected_.)

“For your mouth,” Achilles says, gesturing with two fingers to his own. “The cold air up on the surface has been a bit hard on you, I think.”

In response, Thanatos chews briefly at the side of his mouth. He looks, in that moment, like nothing more and nothing less than a nervous young man overburdened.

“It’s been harder on the mortals,” he says, rubbing at one eye and making a tired, soft noise that sounds so like his brother that Achilles almost thinks it _is_ Hypnos until he hears him cheekily greeting somebody coming up out of the entrance pool. “…. Do you think Zagreus minds?”

“I’m sure not,” Achilles says, truthfully: he suspects Zagreus hasn’t even noticed. “But I’m also sure the queen wouldn’t. She is fond of you.”

“…. If you like,” Thanatos says, turning his head away shyly so his hood hides his face. His sigil appears in the air again just as the Fury Megara steps forward into view, making a noise that’s too breathy to be a snarl and too seething to be a sigh.

“Than,” she says, eyes flicking from Achilles to Thanatos and back. Achilles lifts his chin in greeting. To his surprise, Megara lifts her head back in a casual nod, albeit one she smirks as she delivers. Then she jerks her chin at Master Thanatos. “You look like shit. Come with me.”

“I’m busy,” he says, crossing his arms. He doesn’t leave, though. “I was just leaving. I have more work to do.”

“You always have more work to do. That stuff still in Zag’s room?” Megara asks, prowling out of the main hall and toward them both. She looks like she’s actively fighting against the instinct to murder them on the spot. ( _Ah, youth_ , Patroclus sighs fondly when he’s being regaled with the tale later. Achilles is loathe to admit it, but he finds that he agrees.)

Achilles realizes, when Thanatos looks to him and Megara keeps coming closer, that she’d been talking to him.

“The bath items? Aye, they haven’t gone anywhere that I know of,” he replies.

“Good. Zag showed me how to open the room up a while ago. Come on, Than.”

“I told you, I’m needed-“

“And _I_ told you, you’re _always_ needed. My nails need re-lacquering. Zag chipped them this go.” She snags him by the wrist and starts to tow him away as easily as a stream might take a leaf. (Achilles isn’t about to try it out himself, but he does wonder if in fact Death is so easy to move, if only one has the nerve to reach out.)

“Thanatos,” Lord Hades booms out as they cross the main hall. When Achilles pokes his head out from his hallway in surprise, it’s to see Lord Hades furrowing his brow ferociously, face turned so completely to his paperwork that it’s almost impossible to see him properly through his hair. Megara and Thanatos have frozen where they are, turned to him apprehensively. Megara releases Thanatos to stand at attention at his side. “Where are we if death is too exhausted to come collect? The administrative backlog will be outrageous.” He scoffs, gestures with a heavily-ringed hand. The emerald on his finger, easily the size of Achilles’ entire palm, flashes green as Zagreus’ left eye. “I trust Megara’s judgement in this matter. Do you second-guess me?”

“Lord Hades,” Megara says at the acknowledgement, clenching her fists. Achilles supposes that must be excitement, for her.

“… Never, my lord,” Thanatos concedes. He resumes being tugged across the main hall with nary a complaint, though perhaps with a little less weight pressing him down, if just for a time.

Perhaps the gods are not so different, Achilles muses, leaning himself back against the wall. No, perhaps not so different at all.

That may just be what makes them so dangerous, mightn’t it.

Patroclus and he pluck a small basket of the brightest fruits, the firmest, but when Achilles crosses into Tartarus on his way to the House they fall to ash. By the time he makes it to the House proper, even the soot itself has fallen from the basket, leaving only a faint dusty imprint in the bottom to mark their passing.

“That’s a shame,” says the queen, looking down into the basket with a thoughtful expression. “I never did think anything of it, but seeing this makes me wonder. Nectar is in glass, and ambrosia in crystal,”

“Ah,” says Achilles, who hadn’t realized that, and is rewarded with a kind smile very like his prince’s,

“The crystal is from Olympus, but glass comes from the earth, doesn’t it? This realm.” She purses her lips to one side thoughtfully, tilting her head. Achilles realizes that he’s seen an echo of that very expression on his own prince’s features. (Uncanny to see it reflected so clearly. Uncanny, though he’d always been told he and his mother both strung up their hair in the same motions down to the flick of the head, so is it such a surprise?)

“Ferrying food from Elysium to Tartarus is forbidden,” Hades confirms, shuffling his papers around with one hand. “Completely unfeasible! Your request is denied,” he shouts to the shade in front of him in what Achilles might categorize as an aside, if asides came in at a louder volume than the main conversation.

“I meant no offense, Lord Hades,” Achilles says, a thrill of urgent terror surging down his spine, or whatever it is that he has there instead of bone now that he’s a shade. What punishment will there be for this transgression? Gods, to have had his Patroclus for so little time after such a separation, only to lose him again? It will drown his spirit, sink his soul. “I had no ill will. Regardless, I accept the wrong I have committed.”

“It is a natural rule,” says Lady Nyx, materializing from the eastern corridor, perhaps drawn by the commotion. “You have nothing to fear, loyal Achilles. Water wets, the fire warms, and all food falls to ash as it approaches this realm. All food, that is, save exceptions shielded by some measure of divinity or native power. Tartarus is a prison, after all. It is how it was made, and it is how it exists now.”

“It’s the moving, is it, that causes the problem?” Asks the queen, glancing to the eastern wing and her garden there. She is undoubtedly thinking of her pomegranate trees. Perhaps it’s his imagination, but Achilles imagines he can hear the rustling of leaves. (It is absolutely his imagination: _Nobody told me there’s movement in the air on the surface- the_ _wind_ _!_ Zagreus had said, spreading his arms wide, expression wide with wonder unsuited to the bloody hole in his side. _The air moves! All by itself! And things move on it!_ )

“Yes,” Lady Nyx confirms, nodding. “If you are to have Zagreus partake, then he must go to the fruits. As you have seen, the other way around simply cannot be done.”

“You should have a picnic,” the queen says, putting a thoughtful finger to her lips. “I know he works for the House now, but Zagreus is young. There are so many things he has not yet experienced.”

“This is true,” Nyx says, standing elbow-to-elbow with her queen. (Achilles finds his gaze drifting questioningly between Hades, who glances over his desk at the two women absently, and Persephone and Nyx, who glance at each other and smile in a way he finds… familiar.) “We have asked much of you, Achilles. Is this yet one more thing we may add to your duties?”

“Oh, Nyx, you needn’t make it sound so serious!” The queen Persephone laughs. (Achilles is relieved to find that Zagreus’ delight is both inherited and not— his easy nature comes clearly from his mother, but the intensity of his smile, the burning effusiveness of his joy, are all his own. Certainly they didn’t come from his father.)

“With the approval of the house, I shall take him with me when I next go to Elysium,” Achilles agrees, still feeling a little dizzy from the shock that had shot through him at the idea that he had doomed them, again, to separation, Pat and he.

“Do it,” Lord Hades growls, drawing a line vengefully across the paper in front of him with his quill. “He has caused the Bone Hydra to fall into a sulk under the highest magma fall in Asphodel and the blasted thing refuses to come back to its station. Until somebody can fish it out again, we are in need of a distraction. Such foolish youthful diversions are common on the surface, and are as good as any for keeping an—“

Persephone, smiling in a hard, serious way Achilles in fact has never seen reflected in Zagreus, tilts her head meaningfully at her husband.

Hades shifts uncomfortably, gaze still fixed down on his papers. After a reflective pause, he continues, more quietly,

“A picnic is a suitable diversion to keep Zagreus in check while I figure out how to set the Bone Hydra back to its post.”

“Perhaps I can talk to the poor thing,” Persephone says, lifting her hand to pet at Nyx’s arm next to her own. “I imagine it must be demoralizing for such a great beast to lose against Zagreus every time.”

“It has not been _every_ time!” Hades booms.

“According to the records,” Nyx chimes in, “Zagreus died to the Larnaean Bone Hydra four times before beginning a winning streak against it that has not been broken yet.”

“…. Hmph,” says the Lord Hades, patriarch of his house, and Achilles thinks he sees a smile tick at the very edge of his eyes.

Carberus wags his tail.

In such a fashion, with so many meandering events stacking up to create an entirely new scenario, it follows that Zagreus and Achilles wander across the lush fields of Elysium ( _wow_ , says Zagreus, up to his thigh in grasses, _this is new_ ) that have become, upon the return of the goddess of verdure to her station as queen of the underworld, yet more lush, and rich with fruits of varieties that even Queen Persephone expresses surprise at seeing.

“What exactly _did_ you do to the Bone Hydra, lad?” Achilles asks, forging a path through the overgrown lawns with determination. If the gods themselves could not keep him from Patroclus, some grass will hardly do the job.

“Poor Lernie,” Zagreus says with a sigh, and he sounds so genuinely distressed that Achilles turns back to him in surprise. “I was just curious. I didn’t know they’d take it so seriously.”

Achilles, who has found on occasion that Zagreus has unsettling talent at swaying people to his side, finds within himself a well of pity for the Bone Hydra. In another’s hands, Zagreus’ talents might be dangerous; in Zagreus’s hands, he is sometimes clumsy and unthinking with this unacknowledged prowess, but never unkind. (Even the clumsiness, the impulsiveness Achilles is inclined to waive as a failing on his part—it is hardly Zagreus’ fault that yet again, the tools that come to hand do so in the grip of a novice.)

“What did you do?” Achilles can hear voices in the distance: Pat, definitely. Another person, identity less definite. A stranger. Well— it’s Elysium. How much trouble can be caused? (The realization sets his heart to rest.)

“I was teasing Lernie that with their demeanor, they’d never reach Cerberus’ level of achievement,” Zagreus says with a sigh, reaching up to scruffle at his hair. It neither makes him less nor more disheveled-looking. “And then I told them that I’d gotten Cerberus a nice new ball that he didn’t care for a bit, and that if they kept on hissing at me I wouldn’t give it to them.”

It takes a moment to sink in, what that means. In that time, Zagreus has looked up at him somberly, his red eye set in the stark black shadows of his face hot, bring, a ring of brightest burning red in all the blackness of the earth. They pause in their walking, standing at the apex of a gentle knoll just two more paths away from where Pat waits.

“But I wouldn’t just tease them,” he says, unfolding his hands out. “Hissing is what Lernie does. I gave them the ball, of course. I was curious what they’d think of it. I didn’t mean to…” His expression falls slack, and the blackness his red eye swims in looks very familiar, recalls a Zagreus with his face wet with tears, Zagreus grasping for a tool to build with instead of destroy by, recalls a Zagreus coming up tragically, endlessly empty-handed.

“What happened?” Achilles presses. “You gave the Bone Hydra a ball, and it…?”

“Lernie took one look at the ball and tucked tail— metaphorically, mind, I don’t know if they still have a tail or not. I haven’t see it, anyway. —but uh, they slithered back into the magma and I haven’t seen them since.”

Achilles has never known a sea of grasses to stay so still as they do in Elysium. They stand up straight, grow beautifully, are even starting to tip with seed as time goes by at the strange pace it does in the underworld. But there’s no wind to rustle the fields, no way for Zagreus to hear the beautiful, sibilant hiss of a thousand lives brushing against each other to make a single sound.

There are so many things Zagreus yet does not know, Achilles muses, watching him in silent contemplation. He doesn’t know what the wind can do, barely knows about fish, direly underestimates his own capabilities at moving people. The Bone Hydra is of divine descent in its own way, blood run as true as Achilles’ own if not truer. Apparently it’s no senseless unthinking creature, and woe to the poor thing for it; if its heart were made of stone perhaps it might then have been able to resist Zagreus. But it is not stone, nor magma, that runs through the veins of even the Bone Hydra, it seems:

No, it is blood.

“It will be all right, Zagreus. Perhaps your Lernie just wanted to think a bit by itself. Simply because it has receded for now, does that mean you’ve wounded it?”

“I suppose not,” Zagreus says doubtfully, shifting where he stands. The sweet smell of sun-licked grass rises up. Achilles realizes with some surprise that Zagreus’ flame-touched feet must be heating the grasses in the same way the sun does on the surface. (His feet are not hot to the touch when he allows Achilles to wash them, gently. They are in fact cool as a summer’s night. It feels somehow more intimate to run the washing cloth along his toes, sweep it up over the high arch of his feet, than it had to put a hand at his thigh or even his belly. Zagreus, taught to be shy of showing the bottoms of his feet by Achilles himself, averts his gaze, pink at his edges.) “But I don’t understand what happened there, and it troubles me.”

“If you seek to understand every smallest thing in life, lad, I suspect you’ll be at Lady Athena’s feet for a very, very long time. Some things can only be waited out. Some people need more time than others. Perhaps a Bone Hydra falls into that category.”

Zagreus sighs windily, running his hands along the tops of the grasses.

“I know you’re right,” he says, lifting a brow in wry resignation. “But I don’t have to enjoy it.”

“I don’t see you enjoying much of any wait,” Achilles replies in a low tone. Zagreus snaps his head up, mouth falling open and brows plummeting down to defend himself, but it’s a smile, cautious but game, that graces his face as he realizes no insult is coming and that Achilles is smiling at him fondly, not glowering down at him. Zagreus tilts his head a little, closes his mouth without saying anything. “There’s a place in this world for impatience, Zagreus. You shouldn’t listen exclusively to weary old men like I, lest you stand in place your whole life waiting. That’s what Pat might say on the matter, anyway, and I am inclined to agree with him.”

“You aren’t so old,” Zagreus objects, in the way of the young, but his eyes spark and his teeth come out, just a little, to bite at his lower lip. (Achilles, in that moment, is inclined to agree with him: no, no, he’s not so old that he cannot appreciate what is in front of him.)

But before he can do anything about that, they top the last hill and find themselves studying a scene of deeply minor drama.

“- I WILL CHALLENGE ALL WHO STAND IN MY WAY,” ends the boisterous shade with a bowl cut (really, Achilles wonders, _who_ is teaching these young people how to cut their hair? First Master Death and now _this_ ) brandishing a shield aggressively.

“Technically I think that’s the stranger,” Patroclus says with studied mildness, lifting one hand with a finger out casually to indicate Zagreus, who indeed has drawn a little ahead of Achilles during their walk, and so stands between the tragically-round-headed young man and Achilles. Patroclus leans on his spear like a farmer in his field would against his harvest-scythe; if Achilles did not know how quickly he could tear a man’s belly into two pieces from just that very stance, he might think Elysium had indeed made his Patroclus soft.

“Another challenger?” Achilles sighs, shifting his spear in his hand to move from interim walking stick to, again, weapon. “You lot have been ceaseless lately. Surely you can’t be so bored with your Champion.”

“The Champion is taking some PERSONAL TIME!!!” says the youth, who abruptly seems near tears. Beside him, Zagreus perks up. More stories, Achilles suspects, likely of his misadventures. “Thanks in no small part to YOU, DEMON!”

“Me,” Zagreus confirms with such simple delight that Achilles half expects him to bat his lashes.

“The colosseum has been quiet as of late,” Pat notes, stroking his beard in thought. The mysterious light that soaks Elysium, casts it soft and green, catches on its glossiness. (This pleases Achilles— his beard will be softer against the skin this day, and it’s good timing for it indeed.)

“Allow me to defend your honor, master Achilles,” Zagreus says with efficient cheer, hefting his sword up.

“Be my guest,” Achilles agrees. He steps off to the side to watch the two youths square off, making his way round to Patroclus’ side. The grass here is shorn back to lawn length, cut that way by Patroclus’s spear. ( _Good practice for a rusty weapon like me_ , he’d said, and proceeded to demonstrate that while he was many things, rusty was not one of them, despite how long he had sat in disuse.)

“After I defeat this TERRIBLE CREATURE I will engage in combat with you TOO, great sir,” says the youth with a dismaying haircut, swinging his rounded head to look at Achilles and slapping the flat of his shield with a palm. His eyes are swimming with tears.

“Mind the meal in front of you before you turn your eyes to to what you’re eating for dinner,” Achilles says patiently, and watches Zagreus smack the poor sod into the dirt from behind with the flat of his blade.

The youth, to his credit, gives a spirited fight despite his initial bluster. Zagreus clearly appreciates the chance to show off for Patroclus and Achilles, and so cages some of his wilder instincts in an effort to make the bout a little showier, a little less one-sided. Even so, Zagreus is a god, and one honed sharply with the whetstone of near-constant battle. (Achilles suspects that only Ares himself packs his days more fully with turmoil.) In the end, Zagreus puts Tiberius the Round-Headed down in the dirt so hard that he pops into the shape of a raindrop with one wet eye. (At least his head is less round now, Achilles mutters to Patroclus, and is rewarded with a snort and a mean pinch at his waist where Patroclus has his arm slung around him.)

“Alas, I am slain!” Weeps the shade, disconsolately drifting toward his shield where it fell.

“Aren’t you already dead?” Zagreus presses, lifting the edge of his chiton up to mop at his brow. “So I haven’t exactly slain you, no.” He sounds a bit disapproving. Zagreus has never been terribly understanding of the theatrics of melancholy, a trait humorously at odds with his friendship with Orpheus. This is a disinclination inherited from his foster-mother Nyx, doubtless. Achilles would be hard-pressed to name a more no-nonsense woman. Even Megara allows for some degree of tomfoolery from the right person (Zagreus, only and ever) when she’s in the right mood.

“Alas,” sobs Tiberius, slowly donning his shield onto his back so that he does indeed look very like a turtle. “Alas and alack, I am struck so deeply with woe…”

“Well go be struck with woe elsewhere,” Zagreus demands, crossing his arms sternly. “It isn’t very noble of you to sulk about losing, is it? What would your champion say?”

“Um, he would definitely sulk,” Tiberius sniffles, rubbing at his face so that the dirt on it smears everywhere.

United of one mind, if for just a moment, Patroclus and Achilles, Zagreus, and Tiberius all heave a sigh together.

“How did a milksop like you get into Elysium, anyhow?” Patroclus asks, and frankly, it’s a fair question. Tiberius is no slouch with a shield, but by Achilles’ estimate of things, the standards of judgement are dropping low indeed if that shieldwork is what got this fellow in.

“I am a master of carving ducks,” Tiberius sighs, hefting his shield. It is indeed carved with a duck now that Achilles is looking more closely, and it is in fact breathtaking. “They are beautiful, and I will one day carve the shape that can most fully encompass their perfection.”

Caught flat-footed by the intensity of Tiberius’ passion for ducks, Achilles can only nod.

“Interesting,” Patroclus says, nodding as well but in a much sager manner. The lack of a barb in his words is a clear indicator as any that he would like very much for Tiberius to move along, and now.

“Ducks?” Zagreus asks, looking perplexed as his flush fades and his sweat cools. He squints uncertainly at the shield. “What’s wrong with that bat?”

There is a blanket waiting for them, jugs of wine and water both (best not to tempt anybody to drink from the river Lethe, especially not after all this), and even a platter of fruits.

In the true spirit of Elysium, Achilles had defeated ten men for the honor of claiming the best of the ripened fruits, and Patroclus had laid low another six men for the jugs. All over Elysium, shades are finding new games to play with the coveted prize of a living fruit.

Achilles would have been annoyed by it once, found the pettiness and the squabbling pitiable. He finds now that setting himself in contest against others is a reward in of itself, a way to bring joy and meaning to an existence that stretches from now until the end of time itself. He who once mocked these shades for their pointless scuffles now finds that perhaps, after all, they have a point: what harm is there in bringing punctuation to their otherwise unmarred existence in Elysium? Indeed, perhaps he’d had it backwards the entire time: they are not seeking meaning in their contests, but making meaning through their struggles. Is that not the same way that the living go through life, save for those few whose lives are commanded by the Fates?

The little red orbs ( _tomatls_ , Queen Persephone had said with great contentedness when she visited, Cerberus at her side, _a visitor from another land, delightful!_ ) are gathered in a pile next to grapes and figs, all of which had blossomed and fruited with eager pride as Queen Persephone came to inspect the, ahem, fruits of her return to the underworld. There are other plants yielding their crop as well, which the queen viewed with greatest delight, but these are the ripest, the sweetest, the best.

Achilles wishes he had yet better to give.

Zagreus wades into the river carefully and rinses his face, strips to the waist and washes the sweat from his skin. Patroclus watches urgently from the shore, his hands knotted in each other like roots tangled under the earth, and his worry isn’t soothed until Zagreus wades out again and shakes himself off like his dog would, laughing the whole time.

“Your leggings are wet too,” Patroclus points out, shadowing him anxiously still though his hands have fallen apart and to his side. “Why do you wear them, anyway?”

“Well,” Zagreus says, flipping up the edge of his chiton meaningfully.

Achilles, lying down on the blanket spread over the grass, abruptly tries not to choke on the grape he’s attempting to eat. He’s seen the prince naked, so there’s no reason for such surprise at the view from this angle. He’s touched the prince naked, so this is nothing. (He’s touched the prince, naked, _all over,_ and… where was he going with this again? He’s forgotten, as if he himself has drunk from the river, perhaps had a minor forgetting brought on by the moisture of the river at his lips, along his tongue as he presses it down to a wetted stretch of skin that shivers under)

Patroclus looks down at the bottom hem of Zagreus’ chiton with what is, Achilles realizes belatedly, feigned bafflement. (His fear for Zagreus in the river, though— that had been real. That, certainly, had been real.)

His clever Pat, always maneuvering for the better strike. What Achilles accomplished by sheer power Patroclus always managed by his cleverness, and Elysium has certainly not changed that in him. (Force and precision in one pair, twined with each other such that it was impossible to tell where one started and the other ended, until Achilles himself made the sundering possible. Now they are together again, and as if the strike that split them never happened, Achilles finds he knows his mate’s plot here in its entirety.)

“It’s short,” Zagreus says, tilting his head to one side and then the other, taking Pat in with each of his eyes preferred in turn.

“Good,” Patroclus says, shrugging. “It is easy to remove if the day becomes too hot.” He reaches down and runs a hand up Zagreus’ thigh, slow and steady, confident as his hand on his spear. His fingers drift off Zagreus’ leg gently, his fingertips catching just the slightest at the hem of his chiton to make it swing, flutter, so gently that it might as well not have.

It is the most erotic thing Achilles has seen in what feels like centuries. (It may be the most erotic thing Achilles has seen in centuries.)

Zagreus looks between Achilles and Patroclus, blinking. He looks stunned, surprised by the attention. He does not look unhappy.

“It wouldn’t,” Zagreus says, biting at his lower lip again for a moment, tipping his head again, and Achilles feels the thrill of victory in his breast when he catches the shaky exhale he takes before he goes on, “get too hot here, though, I think. Isn’t the temperature supposed to be perfect at every moment of eternity? Eternal reward for valor and all that?”

“Ah, but perhaps our noble duck carver has a differing idea of perfection from you and I,” Patroclus teases. “Perhaps he is from the blighted lands of the north, and longs for woolen stockings and heavy layers.”

“Wool?” Zagreus asks, in the same tone of voice he’d used for the word ‘duck,’ which is in fact just a word for him, not an animal.

“I’ll explain another time,” Achilles says, propping himself up on his elbows to gesture to the beautiful fruits laid out before them. “Come and sit. Our feast is hard-won on multiple accounts.”

“Your leggings will make the blanket wet,” Patroclus says, rubbing his thumb and fingers together, the ones he drew up along Zagreus’ thigh.

“Should I take them off?” Zagreus asks, bold as day and twice as dazzling.

“Oh, I think you might want to,” Patroclus agrees, giving him a smile that is all lowered lashes and tilted jaw. Zagreus leans down to undo the armor at his legs.

“I shall, then,” Zagreus says, looking to Achilles for approval even as he stands up straight again and his hands slide to his hips. “Should- should I, Master Achilles?”

“Just Achilles is fine, lad,” Achilles says, stretching out with his hands up behind his head to watch this process. “I’ve never found any sense in denying Pat’s more sensible impulses. He has a disappointing way of being right.”

“Disappointing,” Patroclus says, snorting out through his nose and settling on the blanket further away from him than Achilles had expected. But there’s a Zagreus-sized spot between them now, isn’t there?

Ah, Patroclus. What man but he would be able to keep a level head about him as a handsome young god slides his fingers up, slowly, under the hem of his clothing, begins to peel down a thin, clinging set of wet tights from his shapely thighs, and does it all the while looking at both of them with hesitant, burgeoning eagerness?

Not Achilles, certainly. Thank the Fates they saw fit to give Patroclus to him, and he to Patroclus.

Zagreus bites his lip, steps out of his wet leggings, and puts them together with his armor.

“It is a warmer day than usual,” Achilles says, inhaling slowly and watching Zagreus watching him. “Perhaps not overly so, but… it might be better to strip down entirely, don’t you think? It would do no good to overheat, should it become warmer.”

“Oh,” Zagreus says, his chest rising and falling at a deeply handsome pace. He wets his lips, tucks his chin down, lowers his own lashes. “You know the place better than I do, so, probably. Yes.”

“Best to do as he says,” Patroclus agrees, taking a fig in his fingers and eating it with slow, sensual bites that show off the whiteness of his teeth, the softness of his mouth, the beauty of his manners. Achilles finds his gaze riveted on the display for longer than he realizes, but when he looks back to Zagreus expectantly, he is relieved to see that he hasn’t missed the other display: his prince is watching too, lips parted just slightly, lashes beating in a steady, eager flutter that he likely isn’t even conscious of.

“Lad,” Achilles prompts, and Zagreus startles.

“Yes,” he says, and moves hastily to undo the skulls at his shoulder.

“Easy, Zagreus,” Achilles says, pitching his voice low and soothing. “There’s no rush. Plenty of time.”

“Right,” he says, taking one deep, steadying breath that he lets out in an urgent sigh. Ah, the impatience of youth. “Right, of course.”

Off come the skulls, then the red leather bracer strips at his forearm, piece by piece. Next go the braided golden bangles at his other forearm, and then the engraved leather bracelet at his bicep. Achilles has always found it interesting, what little must be done to make a man naked, but now, facing the deliberate pace he himself has set for Zagreus, he finds that perhaps there is more to make a man naked than he likes.

The last piece of adornment to go is the belt, and then Zagreus will be bare, entirely, before them both. Achilles has seen him this way before, of course. Nudity in of itself is not something he finds to have inherent erotic value, simply because the truth of it is that such a thing would be insanity: how would he bathe with the others? How would he wrestle and sport and frolic? An inane concept, to view a flash of skin with inherent scintillation.

But this is so different: Patroclus watches Zagreus with hooded eyes, and Zagreus watches them both with his hands latched into his belt, undoing the metal clasp not for himself, but for _them_. No, nudity is not inherently erotic, Achilles muses, watching Zagreus extend his arm and drop his skull-belt to the living grasses of Elysium, but the process of gifting one’s nudity to another certainly _is_.

The fabric at Zagreus’ shoulders falls loose. First the red cloth slides down one arm, and then, with a shrug of his muscular shoulders, Zagreus drops down his black cloth as well. He stands naked before them both and looks between the two.

His form is unblemished, of course. (He is a god, and he is life, and here he is before them standing coltish and hesitant and self-conscious.) He has a thick thatch of black between his legs and a well-formed cock half-risen there too, a belly unmarred and a chest unsullied and a body, in short, that cries out for marks to be laid on it. A body that cries out for claims to be laid in it.

Achilles drinks this enormous gift in with what is evidently an appropriately appreciative stare, enough to relax the tension in Zagreus’ frame. He looks deeply gratified as he turns his face between the two of them, taking in their expressions with hunger.

“Come here, then, now that you shan’t get the blanket all messed,” Patroclus murmurs, stretching out a hand.

“We wouldn’t want that, would we?” Zagreus quips, his mouth quirking up briefly into a smile that is equal parts disbelieving and anticipatory. “Blankets being clean is a great priority here in Elysium, I see. I hadn’t learned yet of the custom.”

But, when Patroclus has drawn Zagreus down to lie on his back between them, with his head pillowed on Achilles’ arm and one of his hands captured by Patroclus’ own darker one, Patroclus gives a crooked smile, leaning down over Zagreus.

“There are other matters in Elysium that we practice with, I think, a bit more fastidiousness than that. We will be happy to teach you, of course.”

And then he leans down, keeping Zagreus’ hand pinned back with his own, to kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd say, "Zag would make friends with a rock if he could," but he did, so.
> 
> Ah... one more chapter. Good thing I can adjust total counts easily. Thank you everybody for your very kind comments! I will attempt to respond, but please know that I am touched and grateful.
> 
> Oh! It's my [twitter!](https://twitter.com/crownofpins)


	4. Exchange, nuances of, and reciprocity, detailing therein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zagreus gets exactly what he deserves.

* * *

Ultimately it is simple, simpler than Achilles had accounted for:

Zagreus gives because he wishes, with no expectation of return.

And, as is so often the case in such matters, that willingness to give elicits in the recipients such an intensity to reciprocity as to lead to—

“Mm,” says Zagreus, a hand rising up to touch at Patroclus’ face, running his fingers into his beard, eyelashes fluttering shut. His hand, his arm pinned under Patroclus’ flexes, and when Patroclus closes his fingers more tightly on him there, when he deepens the kiss to lick into Zagreus’ mouth and swallow his breath, when he twists his head to kiss Zagreus like he is drowning and the only salvation to be found is on his lips, along his teeth, wet on his tongue, Zagreus gives such a soft, throaty growl of a moan that Achilles finds that his little intrigue about it being a warm day in Elysium is in fact, perhaps, closer to reality than he had suspected.

A trickle of sweat rolls down Achilles’ shoulder. Patroclus leans up and back again. He releases Zagreus’ hand. Zagreus leaves his hand where it is, accommodating and obedient as ever (only in this, only for those he deems so trustyworthy as to bequeath unto them his heart, fluttering quick and bright as a lantern’s flame— but, but— with such a specific set of requirements, is it obedience at all?). His hair is soft where is lies caught between his neck and Achilles’ forearm.

“Oh,” Zagreus huffs, his chest rising and falling and his eyes hooded, licking and then biting at his lips before parting them to pant, softly, cushioned between Achilles and Patroclus. “I, um, well.”

“All right there, stranger?” Patroclus asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm. It might looks dismissive on another, but Achilles drinks the motion of his shoulder, smooth and lingering, in, and watches the way he lets his elbow carry the movement into a graceful swing to his hip, the way his fingers dig in at the cloth there before relaxing again.

In his graceful way, Patroclus turns the motion into an expression of anticipation. It is a pattern Achilles knows well. So well, in fact, that he finds the sight of it inflames his own desire.

“Yes,” Zagreus says, breathily, and then with almost wrenching force he pulls his eyes from Patroclus’ face to Achilles’.

“A grape, lad?” Achilles asks, or attempts to ask. Instead his voice comes out low and husky, rough with desire he is keeping, for now, chained. It isn’t an ask, not at all. It’s a demand, and Zagreus, as is his way with Achilles, seems to have no other inclination but to oblige. His lips part the slightest, his tongue wetting at his lower lip enticingly.

Achilles has no illusions about this aspect of Zagreus: he yields because he wishes to, because he so desires to bow his head and tip his face and tilt his eyes down. It is a generosity bestowed, a gift as tangible as any nectar, a gift as potent as any ambrosia. More. _More_.

(In his own way, grasping empty-handed for a tool, he has found a gift greater than what he can lay even his divine hands on. Zagreus has discovered one of the greatest truths of the world, one that took death and aching years of solitude for Achilles to learn himself: to love is to surrender.)

“I suppose a picnic isn’t much of one without anything to picnic on,” Patroclus allows, taking up one of the jugs in his hands to sip from it slowly. (They have cups, but Patroclus must see no point in using them. Achilles, acknowledging what they’re about to get up to, finds he can’t disagree with his practical mate.)

“So I’ve been told,” Zagreus allows, shimmying where he is with the kind of full-body shift that puts his belly, his hips, his shoulders, his legs on display. He is cut leaner than either Patroclus or Achilles himself, but certainly is no soft-hewn youth still in need of shaping. What form he takes as a man is here before them, Pat and he, stretched out and made docile by the ferocity of their shared desire.

Achilles presses the grape between Zagreus’ lips gently, watches him bite it and struggle, with a quick flutter of his lashes, to figure out how to make eating a grape into a show for his admirers. He gives up after a moment and just snaps it up eagerly, laughing a little at himself, glancing between Achilles and Patroclus to make sure this has earned him no approbation. When none comes, he practically shines with contentment and swallows, then opens his mouth for the next morsel.

Another pleasure of Zagreus is this: his every thought, every inclination, can be read so plainly on his face that it makes one ache to see it at times. (Certainly that radiant earnestness has made _Achilles_ ache, though since he has him lying down nude between Pat and he now, Achilles supposes he no longer has to pretend it has only ever been in a strictly professional sense. He is half-divine, aye, but half-mortal too.)

“How does it taste?” Patroclus asks distractedly, leaning over the platter of fruits they fought so valiantly for to select Zagreus’ next treat.

“Good,” Zagreus says, swallowing. After a moment more of consideration, he makes a face. “Sort of tarter than I’m used to. Muskier? Something different.”

“The grapes I’ve encountered in the House are a different breed,” Achilles says, undoing the clasp of his pin at his cloak. Zagreus, as he realizes he’s doing it, takes a sharp, eager breath in. Achilles locks eyes with him and draws the pin out from the fold of the fabric slowly, tilts his head and shoulder, lets his cloak slide lazily off of him to reveal his broad shoulders, his strong chest, his unmarked skin. This close, Achilles sees the way Zagreus’ pupils dilate at the sight, the one in his red eye so dark as to be under a starless sky, the one in his green eye so sparkling as to be under the noon sun.

“They’re sweeter when they’ve sat for a while,” Patroclus agrees, coming to Zagreus with an olive, small and dainty, perched between his fingers and slick with oil. “But the tartness adds interest, don’t you think?”

“I can see the appeal,” Zagreus allows, his mouth twisting into a smile that’s as close to repressed as it can get on his face. Undoubtedly he is thinking of Pat himself; Achilles doubts that Patroclus was talking of anything but either. He has never been any measure of contrite for his own unusual outlook on life. Achilles loves him for that, and more.

“Ah,” Patroclus says, miming opening his mouth. Zagreus blinks in surprise and moves to sit up, but Patroclus puts a hand, broad and warm, at his chest and holds him still. “Ah,” he says again, arching his eyebrows in a quick reprimand.

Faced with this smallest of defiances, Achilles finds it warms him to action. Zagreus is a man, yes, but a young one, and one whose nature does not lend itself to the long, meticulous plans of his Pat, nor the cautious circling of Achilles. For them to keep their prey now that they have him between them, they will need to secure their hold, and quickly, lest he bolt in a straight line right out of their grasp.

What to do with Zagreus, then, lying in waning placidity like a feast untouched before them? There is his mouth, of course, and his thighs, his hands and his cock, standing handsome at full attention now. But if he’s honest, Achilles’ attentions run to a certain inclination, the same as he knows Pat’s do. (This has always made their couplings run fiercer than others might find pleasing, but in all things they have always been equals, and this is no different: who takes, who gives, is an ever-shifting landscape that they roam pleasantly.)

Watching Pat run this thumb over his prince’s lip, watching Zagreus smile but keep his mouth shut, Achilles doubts Zagreus will be disinclined himself.

“Open up, lad,” Achilles says finally, his mind made up, and reaches ever-so-lightly at the underside of his jaw to tilt his face to Patroclus’ offering.

“All-“ Zagreus starts to say, but Patroclus is up to his old tricks again and pops the fruit into his mouth with solicitous speed, letting his fingers linger as he did with Achilles before, much to Zagreus’ surprise based on his raised eyebrows. He makes a noise, wet and needy, around the fingers in his mouth as they guide the olive to rest gently between his teeth. Patroclus removes them slowly, smiles with deceptive mildness when Zagreus, frozen, blinks questioningly at him.

“They have you well-trained in some ways, I see, your lovers,” Pat remarks, watching Zagreus as he flushes and makes a throaty protest. But he doesn’t bite down or move the olive out of the way to voice an objection, and in seeing that Achilles has to admit that Patroclus has a point. “But I think there is work left to do on you. My fingers are slippery still from the oil, you see.” He dangles his hand out for inspection.

Zagreus lunges. Achilles laughs brightly, pleased by the way his prince has snapped up at the bait Patroclus has dangled down in front of him so unfairly. Their quarry has bolted straight, yes— straight into their arms.

“Down now,” Patroclus objects, but he’s laughing and rolling with Zagreus’ force, nudging him so that he sits on his lap heavy and warm and solid. “Alas, it seems I have less power here than I expected.”

“There is no stopping Zagreus once he sets upon a task,” Achilles agrees. Now that his arm has been freed from under Zagreus’ neck, he sits up and loosens his breastplate, fingers working speedily.

Zagreus makes quick work of the olive flesh, but when he reaches up to fish out the pit Patroclus is there again with his fingers, still glistening wet, indeed, with oil. Zagreus turns his gaze to Achilles, but he simply shakes his head, still undoing his laced-up armor.

Zagreus returns his gaze to Patroclus.

“Ah,” Pat says again, and this time Zagreus parts his mouth to allow Patroclus in. “There’s a good fellow,” Pat says softly when he’s retrieved the pit, his voice dropping low, intimate.

Zagreus almost melts at the praise, collapsing forward to fall upon him and kiss him with low, needy groans. Patroclus’s hands rise up to grab at his ass, giving a hard squeeze that makes Zagreus jump, then groan again and grind down.

Achilles’ fingers work harder at his breastplate’s lacings, giving a relieved sigh when they finally slide completely loose.

“Gods, I want you,” Zagreus says, looking between both of them as if unable to let his eyes rest. “Both of you.”

“Shall you have us both?” Patroclus asks, grinding up against his naked body with a sinuous, beautiful motion like the rock of a boat on the horizon. Zagreus is not unmoved; he moans, his lip curling up to bare his teeth just a little, his lashes fluttering over his bright eyes.

“Yes,” Zagreus whispers, looking between them hesitantly. He sees Achilles peeling off the thin tunic laid under his breastplate and that seems to give him confidence, because he repeats, more loudly, “Yes. I’d like you— any way you’ll have me. I’m told I,” and though he has to pause to moan, Achilles finds he doesn’t mind the interruption, because Patroclus’ hand has fallen finally to Zagreus’ cock, seizing warmly at the base to let those oil-slicked fingers of his work their way up him.

Achilles finally, _finally_ shucks out of his upper layers, cursing whoever decided that he should wear his armor on a day like today, a day when the plan was nothing but to seduce their Prince Zagreus. (It was him, of course, because while Zagreus is far from unwilling, the element of surprise is as valuable a tool in seduction as it is in battle.)

Pat still has on his own breastplate on, leather and thick. Achilles entertains himself with the idea of what revenge he will have on him for making Achilles watch this display without any sensible assistance in peeling off his armor, the absolute bastard.

“- that my mouth is good,” Zagreus gasps, riding now enthusiastically on the press of Patroclus’ cock through his layers.

“Your mouth, lad? And how about _this_ ,” Achilles asks, stripping off the very final layer of his clothes with force approaching violence, the loose long fabric so like a mourning matron’s, to reveal his body as it was, as it is, as it always has been: powerful and eager, best in use, in action, in motion; he surges forward to press himself to Zagreus from behind, rutting his cock up against the plush muscle of his backside with single-minded intensity, seizes Zagreus’ hair, soft and scruffy, to pull his head back and kiss his throat, his jaw, his cheek, and all of it he does as swiftly as he can hold himself back to.

The gasp Zagreus gives is so loud that it startles a pleased laugh from Patroclus under them both. Achilles silences him by turning his head further by his hair and kissing him with demanding severity, letting Zagreus tense and squirm and buck against the both of them. He wraps an arm around Zagreus’ belly and ruts against him forcefully, letting Zagreus writhe and pant into their kiss.

It is true that Zagreus is a god, and true in fact that Achilles is divine in some corner of himself still, but even so he can feel the shocking strength run through his prince’s body, the way he fights Achilles’ hold just enough to let him know that he is choosing to allow Achilles to manhandle him so. Excitement rises in Achilles at the feeling, for he knows it well: he has similarly given himself over to Pat often, with good, terribly good, results.

“That’s, yes, had, it’s gotten some good,” Zagreus gasps, panting, when next Achilles lets him loose to gasp for air, his mouth swollen pink and his gaze hazy, his hands having come up to rest beseechingly at Achilles’ forearm around his waist. “Oh, si- Achilles, your mouth is good as well. Terribly good. Terribly, terribly good.” He swallows, but then his mouth has to fall open again, so dizzied is he by the attention. Pat is still stroking him below, pausing now and then to pet at Achilles where he can touch him.

“You can call him sir,” Pat says, laid out below them with his hair spread out around him, flower-like, a cunning, sly smile playing about his mouth. “If you’d like. You could, and I would have no objection. You might even call us both that if it pleases you, for this.”

Achilles pauses.

Zagreus has gone still in his hold, still breathing wildly, still warm and supple under his palms. He’s glancing at Achilles for guidance, his face open as ever, and what Achilles sees there makes him wish Pat would hurry up and get his _damned_ breastplate off: Zagreus is wild with desire, singed with it, seared from the inside to the out, but he waits, as always, for Achilles to allow him this.

Oh, this power is _dangerous_.

Slowly, slowly, for Zagreus’ benefit and his own, for crafty Pat who lies beneath them both while making his way the one they all follow, Achilles leans in so that his breath curls warmly in the shell of Zagreus’ ear.

“Well?” He says, drawing the fingers of the hand on Zagreus’ belly across the skin there, dipping into his navel briefly with his pinky. “Are you going to say it, lad?”

Zagreus lets out a keening cry and presses back against Achilles hungrily, tilting his face up and burying his fingers in Achilles’ hip so firmly that he knows he’d bruise if he were alive; he is not, and so the pleasant ache of it does nothing but remind him of the treasure Pat and he have between them.

“Please,” Zagreus says, timid somehow still even as he shivers under Patroclus’ hands, moving gently to pet at his balls, to roll the weight of them between his fingers. Timid, somehow, even as he gazes up at Achilles beseechingly with the weighty girth of Achilles’ own cock sandwiched between the cleft of his ass. “Please, sir, I’d be happy to- you can- ugh,” he says, coloring and turning his face away, and then taking a breath to steady himself he turns his gaze between them both and says, no less shyly but with a desperate edge now, “my mouth is good, but I’d like it better if you— if you had your fill of me, in- in whatever way you’d like.”

He tries to look away only to encounter Patroclus’ amused stare.

“Any way?” He presses, and does something to the plush of the sac in his palm that makes Zagreus squirm, not unpleasantly, but rather as if he doesn’t know what to do with the feeling.

“Yes,” Zagreus says, and this time he sounds firmer.

“So if we were to fill your mouth,” Patroclus presses, amused, and watches Zagreus’ face with great amusement, “ah, is that not what you meant? You said any way, though.”

“Tell us what you’d like from us, Zagreus,” Achilles breathes, running his palms up and down Zagreus’ chest, letting his fingertips catch upon the peak of his nipples, the rise of his collar bones, the fall of his Adonis belt, “and by the gods if it’s in our power we’ll be certain to give it to you.” He kisses at the nape of Zagreus’ neck, scraping his teeth along the fine hairs he finds there.

“I’d like you to fuck me,” he says with the abrupt seriousness so typical of him. Achilles finds fondness and desire intertwined deeply within him for his serious, joyful prince. “I’d like you to come in me, so I can feel it.” He bucks and groans, because Pat has returned to playing with the base of his cock. He’s got two hands on their prince now, perhaps as a reward, perhaps as a punishment. With the way Patroclus is, it’s sometimes hard to tell.

“One after the other?” Achilles asks, and when Zagreus nods he hums. “Biting off a bit more than you can chew, aren’t you?”

“I can take it,” Zagreus asserts, tossing his head pridefully. This is somewhat at odds with the sweet, needy noise he makes next as Patroclus finally fists the head of his cock, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

“You’ll take it indeed,” Patroclus agrees, eyes narrowed into deeply carnal appreciation.

Pinching Zagreus’ nipples to watch the way he squirms, relishing the slide of his body against Achilles’ own aching erection, Achilles feels almost as if he could stay like this forever— poised on the edge of a threshold, poised with Zagreus sandwiched between them so handsomely, sweating and gasping and writhing, and they with him.

Then he notices that Patroclus’ armor is still on him.

“For the love of the gods, Pat,” he breathes in exasperation, shaking his head, “take that stuff _off_.”

“Oh, you don’t want it on?” He teases, releasing Zagreus to gesture at himself. “Doesn’t it remind you of old times?”

“I’d prefer you naked, for what it’s worth.” Zagreus arches his eyebrows, flexing his thighs as if to get up and off of Patroclus under his own power.

“Strip,” Achilles sighs heavily, looking to Zagreus over his own shoulder. “He’s always been like this. He’s a handful.”

“More than just a handful,” Patroclus drawls, drawing up the edge of his chiton to reveal his own erection, which, yes, yes, is quite the show indeed.

“Very nice. You’ll get nothing but your own hand if you take much longer,” Achilles chides, and, having said his piece, leans back and drags a willing Zagreus away to give Pat space. Patroclus chuckles, having amused at least himself, and begins thelaborious process of unlacing his own armor.

“Should I help? Sirs?” Zagreus looks between them curiously, poised to do just that, with one hand hovering in the air. Patroclus gives Zagreus a fond look. He’s still got his cloak on, is undoing his armor before anything else. (The _deviant_.)

“No, lad. He’s made his bed, let him lie in it a bit.”

“I’ll come join you in yours shortly enough,” Pat says with infinite cheer, and that seems to make up Zagreus’ mind: he turns to face Achilles. Seated between his folded thighs, Zagreus slides a hand to Achilles’ cock sprung up thick and ready between his legs. Gods help him, the touch feels so good that Achilles finds himself giving an eager little hiss, rocking helpfully into Zagreus’ hands as if he might need help to find the rest of him.

“May I…?” Zagreus asks, his green eye glinting bright.

“By all means, Zagreus,” Achilles says, and watches with some fascination as the prince of the underworld lowers himself down, wets his lips, and swallows down his cock in one accomplished go.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Achilles growls, baring his teeth. His hands fly to Zagreus’ shoulders, urgently, as the wet, the softness, the pressure and the slickness of his mouth close on him. Zagreus moves steadily, confidently, over him, and Achilles has to work from digging his fingers in to the muscled shoulders under his hands.

Zagreus hadn’t been talking himself up: his mouth is, for lack of a better word, _divine_.

“Language,” Patroclus chides gently, his eye falling on the both of them with open lasciviousness: Achilles crouched on his forefeet, holding Zagreus as firmly as he dares right now, Zagreus down on his knees and elbows in front of him on the blanket, knees slightly askew to give him the lower stance he needs for his task. “Careful there, stranger, or somebody might see to it that you’re well and fully used in a stance like that.”

Zagreus, caught in a particularly wet upstroke on Achilles’ cock, parts from it with a pop and a delicate push of his tongue at Achilles’ slit that makes him arch and pull his belly taut in an effort to control himself.

“I’d like that, I think,” he says, locking eyes with Patroclus. “Once you finish stripping, that is.” And he arches a brow.

“That’s the way, lad,” Achilles encourages, laughing even through his all-consuming lust at the indignant expression on Patroclus’ face. “He always takes too long to get dressed too, if you can believe it. In life, he made us late more times than I can count.”

“I suppose I deserve that,” Patroclus replies dryly, shucking his armor off to the side, his laces totally pulled out. No wonder he’s taking so long. (He must be enjoying the chance to watch. He always did like that.) Pat begins to strip off his laurels, his armbands and his bracers, his underlayers, but his overcloak remains. (If Theseus could see him, he’d have a fit.)

“You can put your hands on my head,” Zagreus tells Achilles, planting his own hands on Achilles’ thighs and letting his palms rest on the tense, heavily-strung muscle there with a reverence that belies their respective stations. Achilles tenses his thighs, enjoying the way that makes Zagreus shudder and breathe a little more heavily, the way it makes his dick bob up and down between his legs.

“I don’t want to choke you,” Achilles says, quite reasonably in his opinion.

“I don’t mind,” Zagreus says, and that’s— well— it’s not a _revelation_ , exactly, but it does explain some things about him in ways that Achilles had mused about, on occasion, with no actual plan to ever find out the truth of.

“Show us,” Patroclus demands, finally taking off his cloak to sit before them, happily watching, nude.

“Down, lad,” Achilles says gently.

Zagreus’ instant obedience is as gratifying here as it had been in the bath.

Achilles, after some hesitation, does indeed place a hand on Zagreus’ head, though he finds his fingers combing through the softness of his hair, the unruliness of it, rather than holding him in place. He isn’t as inclined to this sort of thing as he suspects Megara is, though if Zagreus enjoys it, he supposes he doesn’t see any harm in it. But—

“You’re being discourteous, Achilles,” Patroclus objects, leaning to grab the jug of wine, keeping his eyes fixed on where Zagreus is swallowing Achilles down with eager finesse. He sips from the jug, arching an eyebrow. “Your guest has asked of you, and what sort of host are you not to oblige such a simple courtesy?”

“Hmghpm,” says Zagreus around his mouthful of Achilles, which feels good enough that Achilles takes a moment to process what either of them are saying. (Or, in Zagreus’ case, what he thinks he’s probably saying.)

“See,” Patroclus says, gesturing with the jug. How it doesn’t spill Achilles doesn’t know. “ ‘Harder.’ You had best give it to him, don’t you think?”

“I’d still like to have you, lad,” Achilles says, running his fingers gently along the smoothness of Zagreus’ jaw. Zagreus had never grown a beard, nor even a small sprinkling of dark hairs at the lip and chin as some young types lamentably did in an effort to look mature. Another oddity of the gods, Achilles suspects, thinking of all of them he has seen in his life, all of them either heavily bearded or completely clean-shaven at the chin.

(Zagreus, he finds, is ever so much his favorite of the gods, and not just because he’s currently working at Achilles’ cock with all of his considerable skills and attentions.

—Though. Well. It doesn’t hurt his ranking, that’s certainly true.)

He tentatively rests a hand, broad and large enough to encompass the entire back of Zagreus’ head, at his crown. Zagreus makes an enthusiastic noise, folding himself down further onto Achilles, and this time Achilles lets his hand go with the motion, makes himself resist Zagreus’ ascent when he next tries to bob up.

Zagreus makes a surprised noise.

Achilles almost lets go, mortified, but then Zagreus is going down further on him, eyes screwed shut in concentration, and Achilles finds that it is difficult, dread difficult, to retain focus on matters such as politeness when there’s a mouth and a throat and slick and wet wrapped tight and eager around his cock, working steady and hot at him as enthusiastically as can be.

Then he feels his face being turned and leans eagerly into Patroclus, allows him to draw him into a kiss that distracts him further, lets his hip jolt forward just a bit when Zagreus groans against his dick and the feeling slides through the root of him and into his core, hisses and twists against Pat when his fingers pinch at a nipple, finds that Zagreus goes from a groan to a full moan, throaty, giving him crackling, aching pleasure, when Achilles fucks into his face. Patroclus is kissing like he’s trying to fight him, which, oh, yes, _please_ , and Zagreus is purring and moaning and making slight motions and presses of his hot hot tongue, of his wet wet throat, digging his nails in at Achilles’ thighs, and all that draws him closer and closer, until- until-

until Patroclus bites at his throat, seizing a hard handful of Achilles’ hair, and Zagreus tries to pull back, buried to his nose in the curls between Achilles’ legs, but, finding he can’t, gives such a thin, reedy sound as he swallows desperately around Achilles’ cock that he finds he can’t, he can’t, he can’t— his cock pulses a warning into Zagreus’ mouth. He feels him gasp desperately, swallowing around him even as he jerks again and then again, and Pat has a hand on his belly, feeling the twitches of his body, his mouth at Achilles’ devouring his cries as it’s too much, too much, too perfect and sweet and wet and the pleasant crackling wildness of it rises up in Achilles and fills him, rides through him and urges his hips forward to bury himself in Zagreus’ mouth as if he isn’t already buried so deeply, as if Zagreus himself hasn’t brought him so firmly into his threshold and over, and it’s so good, so good, so good that Achilles finds there’s no room in him, just at that moment, for anything else but _that—_

“Poor thing,” Patroclus says, wiping Zagreus face. He’s got a trickle of Achilles’ cum leaking from the side of his mouth, wetness and a little flush of pink sparking up from the corners of his eyes. “And we aren’t even done with you.”

“Are you all right, lad?” Achilles drags himself up from where he’s collapsed back and smooths his hand along Zagreus’ cheek, soothed from his worry by the way Zagreus leans into his hand hungrily.

“That was great,” Zagreus says, as if Achilles hadn’t just been fucking his throat like they were all about to die. His voice is husky from it, his mouth made plush from the friction. Achilles, turned boneless and lax by the golden satisfaction pooling in him, leans and fetches the jug of water for his prince, but Zagreus looks at him with such eager focus that he doesn’t even seem to notice the crock in Achilles’ hands. “Was it good? Did-“

“You’re better with your mouth than good,” Achilles says, and seizing on an idea he lifts the jug up to Zagreus’ mouth; Pat, having read his intentions clearly, presses his hand to Zagreus’ neck from behind and holds him in place like a bad dog.

Zagreus finally takes the hint and drinks.

“Hem,” Zagreus says when they finally release him. His voice does sound better. “Right. Yes, that’s better. Good thinking.”

“It was good enough from my view,” Patroclus comments, drawing his fingers down Zagreus’ neck to trace his spine.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to view something else,” Zagreus says, turning to Patroclus with desperate enthusiasm; his cock is heated and high between his legs.

“I’d like to do a little more, now, I think, than just _view_ ,” Patroclus comments, tone leisurely, but there’s nothing leisurely in how he draws the prince, their prince, into his lap with his legs splayed around his own thick waist to kiss and bite at his mouth, then his jaw, and then on down to his shoulders and his collarbones. (Patroclus has always loved collarbones; Achilles remembers when they were young and still learning such things, how many bruises and marks he used to leave that Achilles had to explain away in increasingly elaborate fashion. Patroclus had apologized, had promised to place the marks better, hide them more, but Achilles had found, almost despite himself, that the intrigue of it was almost half of the fun.

Pat had always brought him such joy, such joy almost to bursting.)

“Oh gods, please,” Zagreus groans, arching back beautifully and coming face-to-face with an amused Achilles.

“I’m sorry to have left you lacking there, lad,” Achilles says, sliding his hands up under Zagreus’s flexing shoulder blades to support him as Pat starts to lay his marks down on his skin. Patroclus delivers bites and sucks and other salutations that make Zagreus hiss and gasp and swallow, make him reach one hand up to Achilles and one hand down to Patroclus. Zagreus and Patroclus writhe together, slowly rutting their cocks against each other, and the sway of it, the handsome jut of them together, is enough to make Achilles consider rejoining them already.

“It wasn’t- oh, yes, that’s- no, it wasn’t- _oh_ ,” Zagreus says coherently, winding his fingers into Achilles’ hair with wanton, familiar enthusiasm that Achilles likes much more than his previous somewhat bashful approach. “I enjoyed it,” he bursts out in a brief reprise between Patroclus’ advances. “Really. Gods- _gods_ , yes, that’s— _mnh_.”

“Good,” Achilles says warmly, tilting his head and nuzzling at Zagreus’ cheek until he turns his head and kisses him.

Achilles guides him at a leisurely pace, drawing the wet softness of his prince’s lip between his teeth, then letting it escape slowly. Zagreus’ eyelashes flutter. He looks debauched already, his hair thrown yet more askew than ever and his eyes just a touch red, his mouth wet and his body arched between them trustingly, his shoulders still cradled easily in Achilles’ supporting hands and his legs spread wide around Pat’s waist so their cocks can rut together.

(Ah, Achilles wonders, what did I do in the living world to deserve _this_?)

“Do we have any oil?” Achilles asks Pat, who tosses him such an annoyed look while dragging his tongue up Zagreus’ chest and over his nipple that it makes Achilles smile. (Pat isn’t the only one who gets to be contrary.)

“Next to the olives,” Pat says, in a tone of voice that implies that it should be obvious.

“I can fetch it,” Zagreus says somewhat nonsensically, balanced between both of their bodies, suspended there by their hands.

“I’ll get it,” Achilles says, laughing softly. “It’s only fair, don’t you think?”

He presses Zagreus up again, who goes willingly into Patroclus’ embrace, and stands to fetch the ampoule with its stopper.

“My Achilles,” Patroclus says with such tender, aching fondness that Achilles jerks his head around instantly. “What a sublime gift you have bestowed upon us both, my mate.”

Zagreus is clutched tenderly in Patroclus’ arms. One of his hands is risen up to curl on one of Patroclus’ biceps, the other combing with no small fascination through the richness of his beard.

“I’m the one who should be grateful here,” says Zagreus, and Achilles feels such an intense, urgent rush of— of some kind of emotion like desperation, like anger, like pride and protectiveness and all-encompassing affection, that he finds the breath knocked out of him for a moment. Patroclus, seeing him, seeing _this_ , remains silent, watching Zagreus with his sharp, sharp gaze. (He has no need to watch Achilles, of course. He knows him too deeply, knows him as well as himself. There is no need to look to know; he simply knows, as Achilles knows him.)

“You need give us no gratitude,” Achilles says more roughly than he’d intended, falling to his knees aside them both with the ampoule of oil clenched between his fingers and his palm. Zagreus, sensing the change in mood, gives Achilles a rare expression: caution. “Your presence is our pleasure, and if the pleasure is mutual, then we are all so lucky,” Achilles says, trying to untangle the hard knot Zagreus’ words had jerked into him.

But Zagreus is a man, not a boy, and his ability to sway others to his side comes not from the ephemeral, not really, but from his own terrible and penetrating understanding of others, learned in hard biting lessons from the mercilessness of a teacher who had the same talent and used it to hurt. And so, after a moment of drawn contemplation, Zagreus’ expression clears from storminess to the warmth of a summer morning after a pleasant rain: he brightens, straightens in Patroclus’ hold, fixes his emerald eye most firmly on Achilles.

“I’m not here because of gratitude either,” Zagreus says firmly. “I’m here because of you,” he says to Achilles, reaching up, and Achilles finds that Zagreus has a hand on each of their cheeks suddenly. He can’t resist this any more than he imagines Megara or Thanatos could; he puts his own hand, broader, rougher-skinned from a life spent in the sun, over Zagreus’. Patroclus, gazing up at them both with a startled expression, seems to find Zagreus’ quietly reassuring smile at him just as impossible to resist; he gives Zagreus’ chest a squeeze where he holds him. “I’m here because of who you’ve been to me, and who you are to me now. That’s it.”

“A relief,” Achilles sighs, taking that hand of Zagreus’ from his face to press a kiss to its palm. “I wish no debts to play at hand here. Certainly not between us.”

“Nor I,” Zagreus agrees, looking in that moment just as godly and regal as any, even nude and freshly-debauched yet as he is. “Never.”

“Well and easy for _you_ to say, o Achilles,” Patroclus says, tilting his head to allow Zagreus to comb his fingers through his beard more easily, a clear hint to Zagreus that he takes with due interest, “but _some_ of us are still waiting for the chance to come, which is in fact a debt I consider well worth collecting on.”

Zagreus gives a soft laugh that dissolves very rapidly into a moan when Patroclus grabs both of their cocks and works them slowly, achingly slowly, in his fist.

“Oh, yes, that,” he says, nodding in rapid agreement, and Achilles lets his hand free so it can fly back to Patroclus’ shoulder for balance. “I revise my statement- I’m with Patroclus on this one.”

“Ah, don’t let me stop you,” Achilles says, unstoppering the bottle now that it’s warm between his hands. “Do you like his beard?”

“It’s interesting,” Zagreus agrees, rocking his hips in neat rhythm with Patroclus’. Achilles finds it fascinating, somehow, the slide of their cocks next to each other and the warm press of their heads, glossy with precome, as they peek together from the curl of Patroclus’ hand. He isn’t ready yet to rejoin the fray, but nevertheless finds the sight entrancing, finds it tickles some dreamy part of himself that feels very much like it might be _considering_ being ready again soon. “I don’t know how to grow a beard, and neither does Than.”

“ _How_ to grow a beard?” Patroclus, somewhat out of breath, tries and fails to sound piqued. “I’ve had to maintain this thing on my face since I hit fifteen, lad. No effort required but that spent to keep it under control, I’ll tell you that.”

“Amazing,” Zagreus says in the same sincere, serious tone of voice he’d used when being explained ducks. “I always thought it was some kind of choice you made once you got old enough to, like- oh, I don’t know- like your hair color, or your shape.”

“Mhm,” says Patroclus, who is too wise to do anything but arch his eyebrows and close his eyes sagely, leaving his less-sage Achilles to furrow his brow. Something about how Zagreus phrased that doesn’t make it sound like he’s talking about the petty changes using potions and creams, diet or exercise, that Achilles is used to. (But Achilles isn’t unwise in all areas, and based on the focused, rapt expression that has fallen upon his Patroclus’ features, if he interrupts them to quiz Zagreus about that… well, it wouldn’t be kind of Achilles, that’s for certain.)

“Do you need my hands, Zagreus? Before you go for a ride with me,” Patroclus says, inhaling in the close, heavy way he does when he’s wrung tight with anticipation. “I’m happy to offer them.”

“Don’t be cruel,” Achilles protests, sitting up a little more to grab an eyeful of just what Patroclus wants to give, very badly, to their prince. His cock is shorter than Achilles’ but much thicker, certainly more than anybody should be expected to take all in one go.

“Give it to me,” Zagreus bursts out at the same time, suddenly verging on breathless, and Achilles remembers the moan he’d given when Achilles had been buried to his root in his mouth and hadn’t let him up from it. (If he were mortal, Achilles thinks he would worry about him, might fret fearsomely about such inclinations. But what good is it to worry after a god when, if cut right through the throat by an errant spear, he simply walks up anew from a fountain of blood, unmarred, if surprised, by the pain of his death?

Aye, what good? _What good?_ )

“You baby him,” Patroclus accuses, a fond smile playing about his mouth. “See, he wants me.”

“I don’t doubt that he wants you,” Achilles objects, frowning. “It’s the method that he gets you in that worries me.”

“Please,” Zagreus says, looking between them eagerly. Patroclus, still with one hand strewn around Zagreus’ shoulders, pulls him close to kiss his cheek, then rustles his beard against Zagreus’ face the wrong way. Zagreus gives a little yelp and squirms, but there’s nowhere to go with Patroclus’ arm around his shoulders and a hand holding their cocks together; he makes a noise of protest and looks beseechingly to Achilles. “It scratches terribly.”

“See why I don’t keep one,” Achilles agrees, running his fingers along his own jaw.

“You’re just jealous,” Patroclus objects, smoothing his mouth against Zagreus’ jawline, mindful of his mustache now as he does it. Zagreus, mollified somewhat by this attention, reaches up to tidy his beard again. His fingers find the broadness of Patroclus’ jaw underneath all that hair. He explores fervently, walking his fingers back and forth across him with obvious interest. “He tried to grow a beard when he was young, you know.”

“Did- yoo _ooh_?” Zagreus asks, his tone altering in the middle of his sentence so comically that Achilles has to work to keep from chuckling; Patroclus has begun to move his hand along just Zagreus’ cock now, working steadily at him with a flick of the wrist that Achilles knows, intimately, to be both torment and absolutely breathtaking.

(Patroclus has beautiful hands, Achilles has always thought— strong and thick fingers, cleanly-maintained nails, the sun-darkened skin on the backs of his hands giving way to the fairer, softer shade on his broad palms, along which ride firm, comforting callouses. He loves to look at them, yes, but to be honest, it isn’t simply _looking_ that has so enamored Achilles to them.)

“Stop,” Achilles objects. “No, don’t tell him that.”

“Then I won’t,” Patroclus says with a smile that says he’s won, “as long as you give us the oil and let our prince have his way with me.”

“Oh,” says Zagreus, startled, and then he laughs with a bright flash of teeth even as he continues to shudder and buck into that firm hold Patroclus has on his cock. It’s the breathiest laugh Achilles has ever heard from Zagreus. He finds that he likes him like this, laughing and glorious, wound up and yet not too keen on his own pleasure to take joy from the world as it gives it to him. (No, never that, not his Zagreus.)

“See,” Patroclus says, basking in his own cunning.

“ _You_ see,” Achilles chides him, unstoppering the bottle to pour some oil between his palms, letting some of it drizzle onto his thighs. Patroclus opens his mouth to object but Achilles beats him to it, leaning in to capture his mouth even as he nudges his hands between Zagreus and Patroclus. Patroclus makes a self-satisfied noise, rutting up with powerful rocks of his hips until he finds Achilles’ hands; when he does, he sighs so sweetly into Achilles’ mouth that he finds he can do nothing but forgive him for his mischievous nature. (Relish him for it, Patroclus insists always when the topic comes up, and try as he might Achilles can never convince him otherwise. Fair enough, that: he can’t even convince himself of it.)

“Achilles, sir,” Zagreus gasps, because Achilles has two hands and two men to pet at with them. “Oh, that’s- yes, please, _oh_ -“

“If you come now, I’m still having you at my leisure,” Patroclus warns, flashing his teeth (a false threat if he ever heard it, but Achilles will let Zagreus discover that particular softness of his Pat on his own one day). He’s one to talk, though- he’s breathing quick and heavy, his eyes gone dark with pleasure and bright with affection.

“Lift yourself up, lad,” Achilles says, and is rewarded by Zagreus not only lifting himself up on his knees but also pressing against the ring of Patroclus’ arms around him to lean closer to Achilles. Achilles, reflecting that perhaps that level of coordination comes from your main romantic shape being a triad to start with, leans down and lets Zagreus do as he likes.

What Zagreus likes is, apparently, kissing, which Achilles deals with well enough while he slides his hand down between Zagreus’ legs, pausing to roll his balls in a gentle press at the palm of his hand that makes him squeak (endearing, that) before sliding back further to his goal.

“Mmm, yes,” Zagreus breathes between their lips, parting only briefly before diving back in to press his tongue into Achilles’ mouth. Achilles, caught between coordinating his stroking of Patroclus (he’s got his hand on Achilles’ wrist to hold him there, the absolute fiend), his kissing of Zagreus, and his slow digital exploration of Zagreus’ entrance, can only grunt in surprise at the ferocity of Zagreus’ kiss. If he had a spare hand he’d pull Zagreus’ hair again, or perhaps pinch a nipple, or maybe simply grab his jaw in his hands and press him back, make Zagreus slow and kiss at a torturously, deadly slow pace, listening to him whine, feeling him squirm. But none of those are options, and neither is retreat, and so Achilles finds himself in the unusual position of having to surrender to Zagreus as he presses inside of him, as he twines his tongue with Achilles’ and unrelentingly advances, making him tilt his head to keep up and gasp in surprise when he nips at his mouth.

The best defense, Achilles reminds himself, and slides a thick finger along Zagreus’ rim briefly before pressing in.

“ _Ohgods_ ,” Zagreus exhales, breathing rapidly. His hips press him further down on Achilles’s finger. “More, sir.”

“Ah, this seems to be a good idea after all,” Patroclus comments as if from a million miles away, his hips moving lazily to push himself up in rhythm with the twitch of tendons he must feel in Achilles’ hand, pressed so against his lap. “Well, my love? He asked for more. Your guest’s ask is reasonable. What cause do you have to deny him? Have you become so discourteous as a host?”

Achilles tries to break away from Zagreus to offer a retort, but Zagreus, ever-forward-moving Zagreus, takes the parting of his lips as further invitation and mounts a full-scale invasion, his own tongue pressing in and then out of Achilles’ mouth in parallel to the slow pace Achilles is driving inside of Zagreus himself with.

It occurs to Achilles, so occupied, that his two companions have thoroughly outmatched him here. Pat has aligned himself to Achilles’ pace, and Zagreus too, and yet it is Achilles who feels lost, reeled desperately between the two, the heat in his core rising up into his cock to revive his erection with unusual fervor. And, despite that, he with his hands and mouth full is positioned in such a supremely difficult way that he has nobody to rut against, nobody to rock in steady rhythm to. (So, then, who exactly is this slow pace playing with the most? Ah, he is as ever his own worst enemy.)

Still, the prince has asked for more, grinding desperately down against his hand, and so Achilles shifts his hand and presses a second finger in, enjoying the feeling of that velvet heat, the supple determination with which it clutches at his fingers, grabs at them greedily, tries to drag him deeper inside of his prince.

Zagreus is moaning in earnest now, eyes closed. He’s abandoned Achilles’ mouth to pant against his cheek, driving himself down against Achilles heavily.

Achilles raises his head to find Pat looking at him-

No, not looking-

 _Staring_ at him.

“I want him,” Achilles says, swallowing, knowing Zagreus’ affections have left him with a wet mouth and a dazed expression, still trying to keep his hand working nimbly over Patroclus, still driving his fingers into Zagreus and the clutching, inviting warmth of his body, finding himself imagining something else there instead of his fingers and finding it a pale comparison indeed. “Ah. I want him terribly, I think.”

“You shall have him, my love,” Patroclus agrees, and Achilles can feel the aching, twitching hardness of Patroclus in his hand before he finally pulls Achilles’ hand off his sex. “After I have had my way with him.”

“Yes please,” Zagreus says, rising up on his knees in anticipation when Achilles slides his fingers from his body, though he can’t keep himself from giving a juddering little thrust forward when Patroclus slides his arms around his waist and lifts him up a little further, pulls him tighter to his chest.

“I am greedy,” Achilles allows, watching Patroclus align his cock with the slippery wet of Zagreus’ entrance. “I wish us to leave you with something to remember us by, Zagreus.”

“I’d like thaaa _aaaugh_ ,” Zagreus says, dissolving into such a plaintive wail as Patroclus pulls his hips down that Achilles finds alarm threading even through the wildness of his lust.

“All right there?” Patroclus has his palms planted firmly on Zagreus’ hips, not letting him move, simply watching with obvious pleasure as Zagreus gasps and squirms and writhes on his cock. “Could it be that you should have taken your master Achilles’ advice after all, lad? A bit big for you, hm.”

“A bit,” Zagreus wheezes, but he’s flushed, delightfully, all the way to the ears and his chest too. The way he’s shifting on Patroclus indicates nothing more than the normal amount of surprise at taking his cock to the root in one slide. “Gods, it’s- ahhh, it’s big. You’re enormous, actually, sir.” He seems to register this with some surprise, actually craning his neck up to look at Patroclus.

“Some of us are made in such a way,” Patroclus allows, which are awfully beautiful words for a man whose cock is sunk deeply into the ass of a god. “Here,” he says, shifting Zagreus’s legs to splay them wide so he can get his feet under him, “here. Ride me, godling, and tell me what you think of your first mortal.”

“Oh,” Zagreus says, eyes going wide, though initially Achilles can’t tell if it’s from the idea or the fact that Patroclus has begun to bounce Zagreus on his cock using his hold on his hips to pull him down when Zagreus slides up. “I hadn’t even- oh, _fuck_ \- I hadn’t even- _fuck-_ thought of that.” He casts a guilty look at Achilles, or as guilty as a man can look when he’s being fucked within an inch of his life. (Not very.)

“ _He_ \- isn’t- mortal-” Patroclus says with obvious pleasure, thrusting up yet more firmly into Zagreus and watching him get his feet under him, watching him throw his head back and squeeze his eyes shut and press his chest out, watching his cock bob helplessly between his legs as Patroclus fucks into him with increasingly loud slaps of flesh on flesh.

“Not all the way, no,” Achilles says, breathless, painfully hard very suddenly as he watches the tableau before him, of his love Patroclus giving his adored prince Zagreus a fuck he doubts he’ll ever forget, “I’ll see if I can match the passion of a fully mortal man, though.” Watching Zagreus roll his hips down, watching the girth of Patroclus vanishing and then reappearing between his legs, Achilles finds that he hardly knows what to do with himself.

“You- _flatterer_ -“ Patroclus says, and growls, seizing Zagreus more firmly yet by the hips to drag him down more forcefully than before.

Zagreus cries out, but Achilles finds he’s learning the language of Zagreus’ noises, perhaps: though it sounds like he’s in agony, his back tenses and so does his belly, and his cock drools heavily against Patroclus as they rise and fall with such passion that, if they were in a bed, Achilles thinks they may well have broken the damned thing already.

“Patroclus,” Zagreus says, which- really- Achilles has to give to him, is quite a mouthful when you’re getting fucked into next week. (The job is due extra regard, in his opinion, considering how time passes for them all in the underworld.) “Patro- Patrocl- _ahhh_ , _Pat_ ,” and he gives up his struggles and pitches forward, bracing himself against Pat’s chest to come with a shuddering shake of his shoulders, a snap of his hips and a tensing of his rear that Achilles, watching from his angle, finds so incredibly appealing that he takes a sharp breath in.

“Good lad,” Patroclus praises, grunting, using the shift in Zagreus’ weight to pull him further and closer so that he’s nearer to the hinge of his hips. “Good, good lad,” and Achilles knows it will happen even though he feels guilty for knowing it, but: already dazed and fucked out from his orgasm, the praise makes Zagreus flush, makes him part his lips a little, makes him arch and give a sighing moan and shed leaves over the both of them in a pretty little flutter that makes Achilles’ heart ache.

But Pat isn’t done with Zagreus, not yet. He seizes the prince’s rear in his two hands from behind and around, thumbs locking into the muscled furrows of his hips, and rising him up on his cock brings him down again with a hard slap of flesh that makes Zagreus shout.

“All right, Zagreus?” Achilles asks. Zagreus, the telltale pink collecting at the edges of his eyes again, nods frantically, seemingly unable to speak.

“Good,” Patroclus grunts, and leaning down he sets a pace between the prince and himself that makes him wail, truly cry out, his face contorting in something like pain even as he reaches up, twining his arms around the back of Patroclus’ neck to pull him in closer and kiss greedily, pausing only to pant and cry out when Patroclus presses himself up and Zagreus down and grinds into him heavily, gasping and shuddering, his teeth finding Zagreus’ neck because his collarbones are too far away, before he parts from there to shout out the pleasure he’s found in their prince’s body.

Achilles watches with rapt fascination as Zagreus writhes, shifts, rises up and down as far as he can go, which is: not at all, as Patroclus is pressing his hips as tightly against him as he can manage, rolling them in little circles as he comes into Zagreus’ body. They’re gasping and moaning, Pat dropping a litany of praises and Zagreus cooing in pleasure at each of them, and all of it goes straight to Achilles’ cock as he watches.

“Gods,” Patroclus says into the sweat-soaked column of Zagreus’ throat where his face is pressed. He kisses there gently, then begins the slow process of unfurling from around Zagreus, pausing to kiss every bit of their prince that he can reach as he does. (For all of his ferocity in the act of making love, Patroclus is a soft lover after, delivering kisses, soft open-mouthed things, with the utmost gravity. He smoothes his fingers, beautiful and calloused, over every inch of skin his mouth cannot reach. Achilles aches with pleasure simply to remember it, even though his other half is here in front of him, will soon like as not do it again to him, to Zagreus too. To both of them.

He is a love-sotted fool. Patroclus would have him no other way.)

Zagreus groans throatily as he rises up, letting Patroclus’ softening cock free from his body with a noise like surprise, if surprise was completely expected.

“My lads,” Achilles says with a chuckle, finding his arms abruptly full of Zagreus and his leg pillowing Patroclus’ head.

“Come back here,” Patroclus says, touching at Zagreus’ thigh softly. “I’m not done with you, stranger.”

“Can you really call me stranger if you’ve just come in me,” Zagreus asks, sounding incredulous.

“I’m sure I can manage it,” Patroclus replies airly, and Achilles finds that he doesn’t doubt him either. “Come here. Let me kiss you, and pet you, and praise you for all your goodness.”

“Oh,” Zagreus says, pinking abruptly. (The more they make him flush, the more the flush spreads. Now it’s to his belly, spread from his chest. He looks as vital as any surface-raised youth, twice as radiant.) He looks to Achilles, who looks at Zagreus, kneeling in front of him, with affection.

“Go on, if you want to, Zagreus,” he says, smoothing a hand over his hip, certain he can feel the heat of Patroclus’ grip on his skin still.

“I do want that,” Zagreus says, made yet more candid than usual, perhaps, by the intensity of his orgasm, or Pat’s, or some combination of the two, “but I also wanted, Achilles, sir, to…”

Achilles draws a thumb along the corner of Zagreus’ eyes, wipes away some of the moisture he finds there carefully.

“You’ve done enough, lad. I told you: you should feel no debt here.”

“You idiot,” Patroclus says with blissful rancor, collapsing down onto their blanket and thumbing a forgotten grape into his mouth. “He wants you.”

“I do,” Zagreus agrees earnestly, leaning over and in toward him, about to overbalance, shaky at the knees and trembling in the thighs. Achilles would bet that if he turned him over and slid his thighs open he’d find some of Patroclus’ come, wet and hot still, smeared between. Ah, the Fates have cursed him even as they’ve gifted him, because that idea is so appealing that Achilles finds himself making up his mind even as Zagreus finishes: “If you’ll have me, I mean.”

“If I’ll have you,” Achilles says, shaking his head, and then again, “If I’ll _have_ you,” he says, and reaches forward to pull Zagreus to him, against his chest and his belly and his hips, rolling them so that Zagreus is under him finally, finally, as he’s wanted him for- for- for not just now, Achilles allows, and finishes, hitching up Zagreus’ knees over his shoulders and leaning down again to let his hair spill down over them both.

“I think he might be willing,” Patroclus observes dryly, now chewing thoughtfully on a fig with his lashes dropped low and his chin tipped up.

“I’m glad,” Zagreus breathes, looking up at Achilles with rapt, almost hypnotized focus.

“As am I,” Achilles says, pushing his hair back from his eyes (fruitlessly), then drawing his hand along Zagreus’ jaw, down his throat, over his chest and over his side, up his hip and thigh and then to his knee. He secures a hold and shifts his stance. “Let me know when you’re read-“

“Now,” Zagreus says, breathless between the last time he spoke and now, the corners of his eyes still worryingly pink as if he might burst into tears even as he starts to beg Achilles: “Now, _please_ , Achilles, I want you so badly. I-“

“I can’t say no to you, lad,” Achilles assents, in part to keep him from feeling he has to beg, but Zagreus goes on, endearingly, desperately, even as Achilles takes himself in hand with an eye to working out the physics of this: Zagreus flat on his back, knees hitched up over his shoulders. Hm. The knees might be too high up, now that he looks at this. His shoulders on the ground and his back supported by Achilles’ knees, then. (Or perhaps he’s just worrying over nothing, as is his way.)

“I’ve wanted you for, ah, so long,” Zagreus says, flushed ferociously at the ears, on the tops of his cheeks, at his chest and down his thighs and even at the corners of his eyes again, perhaps gone drunk finally from having been fucked within an inch of his life and about to have it happen again.

“I told you,” says Patroclus, licking the juice of a tomatl from his arm where it’s splattered.

“You did no such thing,” Achilles protests, and then to Zagreus, he soothes: “I know, lad. It’s mutual.”

“Took a while to convince him to do anything, _as usual_ ,” Patroclus says conversationally, his voice slow and dramatic, watching Achilles drop his head, hang it in irritation. “I knew for sure when I saw he’d kept your laurels that you gave him, you know, that it was worth a go.”

“I’m a little busy here,” Achilles groans, his cock still in his hand, looking to Pat where he reclines with a grin so smug it belongs on a cat. “We both are, in fact. We can talk a little later, if you’d like, my love.”

But when he next looks down Zagreus, his legs spread and resting on Achilles shoulders, his cock giving a flagging effort at revival, his prince is gazing up at him with stunned, open-hearted stare.

“You did?”

“Of course,” Achilles replies, thinking very earnestly about maybe letting Zagreus down and sorting all this out before they try to have another go at it.

“You kept- my laurel, I mean. The one I gave you in training all those years ago.” He says it in a suspicious, flat tone, as if Achilles might be fooling him in some complex, cruel jape.

“You shed one when you gave me an ambrosia too,” Achilles confesses, feeling enormously guilty very suddenly for the smallest crime he’s ever committed. “I picked it up and kept it.”

“Why?” Zagreus asks, his arms up loose over his head and his knees lax over Achilles’ shoulder, and though Achilles would be hard-pressed to find a more awkward time to have this conversation, he supposes there must be a reason Pat has forced the issue, so:

“I was harsh with you. You had mentioned Pat, and I rebuffed you so firmly,” Achilles says, honestly uncertain himself. “I felt badly about it. I thought… I don’t know. I can return it if you’d like. Drop it in the Styx. Let it do whatever they normally do.”

“No!” Zagreus says urgently, looking between Pat, who is licking his fingers of tomatl with a decidedly smug air, and Achilles. “It’s yours. You can keep it.”

“A token,” Patroclus muses dreamily, picking through the fruit plate with discerning fingers. Achilles, confused and dangerously close to losing his yet-very-urgent erection, represses a sigh. “Nice. Most of the time, don’t people give those to you?”

“Yes,” Zagreus says simply, and then he frowns. “Why did you keep the laurel from that conversation, of any of them?”

Achilles breathes out slowly through his nose. Why, he reflects, is a very good question. Why did he keep that one? Why does he still have Zagreus unfurled with his legs spread open? Why is any of this happening _now_?

“Because I wanted to do better by you,” Achilles finally says, inhaling, frowning, “than I’d seen you have. You dropped that leaf when I failed at that, and I… couldn’t forget it. I’ve always wanted good things for you. You’re a good thing, Zagreus, in many people’s lives. Including my own, and Pat’s. Megara, Thanatos. Others. Too many to list, by my eyes. You’re a good thing to others. It seems natural that you deserve the same for your own life.”

Zagreus, still on his back beneath Achilles, stares up at him with such blank shock that Achilles feels certain he must have done something, said something, terribly, unsettlingly wrong.

Or, he does until Zagreus reaches up and drags him down, with all his godly strength, to kiss him, his legs sliding off Achilles’ shoulders finally.

Achilles grunts with surprise, but this time his hands _are_ free, so he pins Zagreus’ jaw between his hands and slows his desperate, biting kisses. (He suspects Megara has taught him this, this uniquely ferocious snap of a kiss, and vows to give him, in this as in other places, other tools, other methods, other ways of being and doing. That fierce kiss is passionate, certainly, but Zagreus deserves too to have sensuality, languor, desire at his beck and call.)

Pressing Zagreus’ jaw up with his fingers, Achilles folds his body in two to arch over his prince, his pupil, his favorite of the gods, letting him bury his hands in Achilles’ hair and caress more and more slowly at Achilles’ shoulders, his neck, the flat of his chest, as he learns. Achilles leads him in careful, languid intertwinings of the tongue, withdrawing when he becomes too fierce again, over and over, until Zagreus is groaning and loose under him, until his body is heated under Achilles’ touch, until Zagreus turns his head and looks to the third member of their tryst, the one who started all this, beseechingly and with an edge of desperation that wakes something in Achilles he hadn’t quite known was there.

“There there,” Patroclus coos, eminently pleased with himself when Achilles tsks. “I am very pleased with myself, before you ask,” he says, and Achilles closes his mouth with a resigned snap of the jaw. “Didn’t you say yourself, my Achilles, just this very day, that you’d never found any sense in denying my more sensible impulses? That I had a disappointing way of being right?”

“Ach,” Achilles says, because alas, alas. His Pat is right, just as he himself had said.

“I’m glad, for one,” Zagreus says, his voice gone husky and a little bit raw. “Thank you for your good sense, sir.”

“Shall you thank me for my superior service to you, as well, Zagreus?” Patroclus says with a leer, which is a bit much for Achilles.

“Don’t get so ahead of yourself,” Achilles says, tossing his head and shifting to reclaim Zagreus’ legs in his hands. Zagreus, looking eager, goes with the motion, arching his spine up until his knees are over Achilles’ shoulders again and Achilles has one hand, again, at a leg. “I have yet to demonstrate upon our prince my own method of service,” he says, and once more, reasonably convinced nothing else is about to come up, he takes his prick in hand to find Zagreus’ entrance, enticingly slick and ready for him already.

“ _Our_ prince,” Patroclus says, reclining into a lean on the blanket and smiling at Zagreus, who looks between them with a desperate, astonished air. “You see, stranger? I’ve been sharing him with you the whole time.”

“It’s generous of you,” Zagreus says, and then he says nothing more for a bit except for a sighing cry of pleasure, because Achilles is working his way into him.

“I suppose,” Patroclus says, tilting his head to watch them both. Zagreus makes a choked noise, taking not just Achilles’ cock but also his weight as he sinks into Zagreus slowly, mindful of the rough ride Patroclus has given him already. Even so, it takes every ounce of his self-control to go gently, to slide in softly, because he’s so slick and hot, velvety and pliant and warm, that Achilles feels his thighs tremble with the effort of restraint.

“Mngh,” Zagreus wheezes, folded in two now beneath Achilles and seemingly uncertain of where to put his hands. Achilles, his own now braced on the blanket above Zagreus’ shoulders,presses himself yet further in. He’s rewarded, sweetly, by Zagreus digging his nails into Achilles’ shoulders.

“All right down there?” Achilles asks, lifting a hand to smooth it over Zagreus’ hair.

“Yes,” Zagreus pants, his knees clutching hard at Achilles’ flanks. “Oh, yes, absolutely.”

“I should have warned you,” Patroclus says casually, watching Achilles shift back again to brace himself, a hand rising to Zagreus’ legs, “that he’s absolutely cruel in bed, shouldn’t I have?”

“Cruel,” Achilles snorts, pushing forward further until he feels the press of Zagreus’ ass against his hips. “What is this? You’ve never complained of your treatment at my hands before.”

“Not for me,” Patroclus comments, watching the slow, measured pull of Achilles’ hips back, the flex forward. “You’ll hear no complaints from me, it’s true. But I was thinking of your own preferences in contrast to his own. You’ll be there a while, Zagreus. He takes his time in this as in all other things.” Zagreus turns his head to look at Pat, who smiles at him fondly. “Not that I mind the view, of course.”

“Don’t let him bother you, lad,” Achilles breathes, drawing back and then slotting himself again into Zagreus with slow, precise force. The press of him, the squeeze, the pressure even of his knees at his sides and the sharp scrape of his nails at Achilles’ shoulders and arms, is incredible. “He’s just sour because he wants to pet you and has to wait.”

“I’ll like that,” Zagreus promises, his eyebrows knitting up. “Oh. I’ll like it very much. Oh, gods, ugh, Achilles, please, please- more,” he begs, throat working in a swallow, eyes focusing hazy and uncoordinated on Achilles’ face. “Harder.”

“I can do that,” Achilles agrees, pulling back again almost to the tip of himself, enjoying the tight pull of Zagreus’s body as he does, the way his eyes flutter and his lips part. He snaps himself forward in with long-earned eagerness, watching his prince’s eyes screw shut and his chest rise in a heady gasp. Zagreus’ chest flushes, his body tenses, and his cock, spent and soft between them, gives a thoughtful twitch.

Achilles sets the pace like that, slow and forceful. While he won’t give Patroclus the satisfaction, he does take some of his own in the fact that Zagreus winds up to a throaty, needy growl with delightful ease. With every leisurely drag of his cock out Zagreus clutches at him, claws at him, begs and writhes as if he thinks this is it, this is it, no more will come after this and he will be left bereft, and with every deliberate press back into his prince, grinding his hips as he sinks the root of him deep into the darkness of his prince, Zagreus makes throatier and throatier noises until, finally, he’s reduced to simply growling his passion, his chest slick with sweat, his hair stuck to his face.

To touch him through all this is a delight. He runs his hands over Zagreus’ chest, playing with his nipples, teases at his sides in light touches of his fingertips and long, strong presses of his palms, kisses at the inside of his knees and draws his hands up and down his thighs, touching at the soft skin there with his nails when the mood strikes him. He licks the sweat from Zagreus’ neck and sucks a mark into his skin to match the scattered landscape Patroclus has left on him, he kisses his temple and his laurels, even, and plays with his cock, gently, as it starts to revive, until it stands like the rest of him in rigid, flushed attention.

Achilles enjoys the sights, the sounds, the feeling of bringing his prince pleasure with all due intensity, with all due leisure. He will not swallow this down greedily, will not devour this moment with haste. He drinks Zagreus down as carefully and fastidiously as he has, with Pat, the ambrosias they have been gifted, pays him the gracious and grateful tribute his prince, his god of blood, is due. _Overdue_ , if you ask him.

“Please,” Zagreus says finally, almost sobbing with pent-up desperation, his head tossing fitfully, his body trembling, either from exhaustion or wound-tight arousal or maybe, even, both, “please, Achilles, sir, please, let me come, _please_ , sir, _Achilles_ ,” and that’s more than enough for Achilles, for he’s a man too at the end of the day and no man, none, would be immune to this sight of Zagreus unspooled loose in the limbs and wet at the mouth and tight at his prick, silk-soft and blood-hot where he’s been fucked twice now, once by Pat and now again by Achilles, his name falling like ambrosia again from his lips, pleasure searing in his eyes like a fever run wild in him.

“Gladly, lad,” Achilles murmurs, and sitting back on his heels pulls out completely.

Zagreus gives him such a shocked, wild-eyed look of betrayal that Achilles almost feels bad; Patroclus coughs into the date he’s leisurely eating and twirls his finger in the air. (He puts his wrist into it. It is very elegant-looking, as most things Pat does are.)

“Turn over, Zagreus,” Achilles tells him, and watches with fondness as Zagreus’s mind finally comes back to him enough to understand what’s about to happen; he turns onto his hands and knees with trembling, eager haste, his cock arced so high against his belly that he’s got a smear of his own precome on the skin there.

“Like this?” He asks, turning his head to watch Achilles with naked hunger on his face. Gods, Achilles muses, shuffling forward to nudge between Zagreus’s legs again. Or the young. He can’t decide which is the more dangerous combination here, can’t decide which part of Zagreus it is that has given him a lusty third wind after being thoroughly, deeply exhausted, repeatedly.

“Almost,” Achilles says, and leans forward with his weight on his palm to press Zagreus’ chest into the ground. “Now, like that.”

“Ah,” Zagreus says with considerable heat to his tone, spreading his legs wider. “I like this one.”

“Glad to hear it,” Achilles allows, and so positioning himself he pushes back into Zagreus’ pliant, burning body. He sees Zagreus’ fist clench in the blanket, sees his shoulders rise, and leans forward to pin him down again with his weight, with one hand splayed between his shoulder blades. “Do you like _this_ , Zagreus?”

“He certainly seems to,” Patroclus comments, and his voice is like a warm hand at Achilles’ brow. He flicks his gaze to his beloved and finds that he’s smiling, pleased so by the display in front of him.

“I definitely do,” Zagreus confirms, voice muffled somewhat by the blanket. “I do, _I do_. Please, Achilles-“

But he need beg no longer, because Achilles, having paid his tribute to his prince, his god of blood, now offers his skill in service: a hard cant of the hips forward, startling a shout from Zagreus, and then another, and another, as Achilles rides him just as hard as Pat had, perhaps harder, putting his thighs and his back into it, letting his weight fall down further onto the hand between those divine shoulder blades so that no matter how roughly Achilles thrusts into his writhing, jolting, eager body, Zagreus moves not at all.

He focuses on the task at hand with all of his attention, pinning up one of Zagreus’ thighs under an arm and against his side to make him struggle, to make him clench, and it works, teases shouts and yells from Zagreus when before he’d been groaning and hissing. Before long Zagreus is clawing at the blanket with wild gasps, struggling with genuine power against Achilles’ hold on him, but Achilles knows this game from both angles, so he merely tightens his grasp on the leg tucked up against his side and rides Zagreus yet more quickly, relishing the way Zagreus’ breathing goes high and breathy and then, spectacularly, his belly draws taut and his voice goes low and he’s screaming in reckless, mad pleasure and coming in white streaks, untouched, against the blanket below them.

“That’s good,” Patroclus comments, swallowing. “Ah, what a sight you have given us. And now you, Achilles? Shall you show yourself to me as well, just like that?”

Achilles gives a deeply satisfied sigh at the ask and picks up Zagreus’ other leg then, enjoying the way he tightens and shifts against Achilles as he drives himself into his prince once more, then twice more, and then thrice before letting Zagreus’ legs down and bearing down with all of his weight, all of his bulk, to pin Zagreus flat into the blanket as Zagreus himself wails his pleasure, or torment, or both, and as bares his teeth against the nape of his prince’s neck, he finally lets the heat and the shivering, overwrought buzz of Zagreus’ body pull him into climax, one that creeps up on him and spreads, glittering like a thousand shards of infinity, through his consciousness until he’s nothing at all, nothing at all, but a man spending his passion, his essence, in honor of his most favored god, in tribute to his best beloved.

Thus, Achilles finds, Zagreus gives truly and freely, yes, with no expectation of a return or recompense. And such are gifting traditions in the underworld that such things are rare to start with, generosity, and even rarer yet is it to receive generosity in kind. It is frowned upon, Achilles observes, to treat such gifting as an exchange, which makes the truly reciprocal display of affections challenging indeed, especially for one such as he, a fellow not born and raised into the nuanced and subtle underworld traditions. (Simple compared to Olympus, the queen had remarked, which makes the hairs on the back of Achilles’ neck stand up in alarm. The gods, at least some of them, are different indeed, and Achilles is gladder yet at that moment to have nothing to do with any of the Olympians yet any longer.)

But in a framework where gifts are the main method of conveying appreciation, Achilles discovers in due time, the subsequent display of such gifts, paid appropriate attention and cherished with due appreciation, are as powerful a message to the giver from the giftee as any gift given in kind could be.

(Zagreus lies exhausted between them, almost unconscious so completely have they wrung him loose. He listens with glowing, tender delight to Patroclus as he whispers praise into his ears, murmurs admirations into his skin, worships him with a soft mouth and gentler hands.

Zagreus is dropping leaves in a steady trickle. Patroclus teases them from his hair and Achilles brushes them from his neck but they still drop. Achilles would be worried, but Zagreus is so pliant and content between them that it seems clear that any concern would be misplaced.

Achilles runs a hand over Zagreus’ hair, spooned up close behind him, and breathes him in, enjoying the fact that Zagreus smells, just now, of Pat and he more than anything else. Perhaps he will take them to the baths later, he muses, drawing his teeth softly over the shell of Zagreus’ ear and watching him shiver, and scandalize Theseus if they are particularly lucky.

“Shall I keep one?” He whispers into Zagreus’ ear, plucking up one leaf gently before it has even touched the ground.

He is rewarded with such a delighted shiver that he needs no other answer.)

More, in fact.

“Lernie is back,” Zagreus says brightly, walking out of the blood pool.

“Congratulations,” Lord Hades grumbles, and then does a double-take.

“They want to study under Cerberus,” Zagreus says, and gives two of the Titan-born, undead bone-snake’s floating heads orbiting him a pleasant pat. All of the heads hiss in gusty ferocity. One, curiously, is clutching an enormous item cast in black nightstone. It looks like a nightmare version of a stick to Achilles’ eyes. “What do you say to that, boy?”

Cerberus, who has been growing fretful of his divided time between guarding the gates and guarding his master and mistress, gives an echoing bark in triplicate.

“NO,” Hades booms, but from his position in the hall Achilles sees Persephone walking in from the garden.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, dear,” she says, and everybody knows it’s a done deal.

“How did you figure that one out?” Patroclus asks, frowning with concentration at the rod of fishing’s bobber in the river. Zagreus, snuggled next to him in the grass, grins.

“I’d given them one of Cerberus’ old toys, which seemed a bit gauche of me when mother pointed it out to me.”

“Of course,” says Patroclus, bland in the way he is when he doesn’t understand the connection but sees no point, absolutely none, in pointing that out.

“I got the house contractor to make a new one for Lernie and dropped it off the next time I was in Asphodel. Simple as that. They weren’t around, but I suppose they must have come after I left. They got the message, clearly!”

“Quite straightforward at the end of the day, or night,” Patroclus agrees, and looks, bewildered, to Achilles as he walks over the hillock.

Achilles shrugs broadly, just as baffled, and folds himself into a seated position next to his mate.

“You’re missing your bite,” Zagreus points out.

“Ah, well,” Patroclus says, and resolutely tries to reel in the thing even though nothing is on the hook after all. He’s busy kissing Achilles.

“Oops,” Zagreus says urgently as Patroclus gets an actual bite, and starts to reel it in for him.

He loses it too, though, because Achilles is leaning forward around Pat to greet him, and his gaze is stuck on the little laurel leaves, two of them and then a third, strung onto fine golden thread and then sewn with meticulous, delicate care onto his cloak at just the spot under the badge of the House that he wears always.

And then, too, Achilles is kissing him, but really, that’s the lesser distraction, isn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achilles u nerd
> 
> Alternate title: 'local masochist twunk gets fukin wrecked, appreciates every second of it, asks for more please sir'
> 
> Thank you everybody for your eager words and your kind encouragement! Continuing my trend of 'normal chapter 5k, porn chapter MOAR', my hands slipped, repeatedly, and out came this stuff :| wild what those hands will do sometimes
> 
> A special thank-you to some of my very super-return readers from Baba (you know who you are). Recognizing your usernames and comments made my day especially wonderful. <3 I'm very grateful to everybody for your comments. They make my day! Night. Whatever it is.
> 
> I'll probably write some more one-offs with porn in them, because now I have laid down the rich emotional foundation of torment and self-denial, I want to roll around in it goddamnit
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/crownofpins)


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